The Muppet Show Comic Book # 10

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of The Muppet Show Comic Book # 10 (Boom, 2010).



You know, I've mentioned a couple of times lately that the only books that I pick up regularly anymore are 2000 AD and LSH and that's not true. I don't know why I forget that I also have a regular order for The Muppet Show Comic Book by Roger Langridge. It's certainly a better book than most, and, if you will, too cool to be forgotten.

This time out, the Muppets host musical guest Howlin' Jack Talbot in a Halloween-themed story. Talbot, composer of some familiar-sounding spooky novelty hits, is a big favorite of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, but their numbers together keep falling apart as Talbot wanders offstage midway through each song. And then this great big dog starts showing up.

That's the main plot, but naturally there are other acts that get stage time, and Langridge has a blast with all of those. He's developed another recurring sketch for the cast of Pigs in Space, in which Link Hogthrob is a 1950s tweed-jacketed paranormal investigator, and these are huge fun. The high point, though, is the Muppet Labs segment, this time featuring a hair growth formula which, tested on Beaker, doesn't seem to do much of anything. Langridge's pacing and layouts are just perfect for gags like this, with every panel a chuckle-filled joy until the payoff.

Absolutely one of the best and most consistently funny books on the stands today, I can't recommend this highly enough. Seriously, start picking up this book if you're not already.

The Muppet Show Comic Book # 0

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded, and maybe you'd like to think about reading them as well. This time, a review of The Muppet Show Comic Book # 0 (Boom, 2009).



Well, I can't help but feel a little disappointed with this one. Having successfully published a pair of four-issue Muppet Show miniseries, Boom has committed to an ongoing title. I don't know that you can tell that huge of a difference if you're picking these up from the funnybook store, but this one is labeled issue number zero, as is the fashion among publishers. While the script is by the mighty Roger Langridge as usual, he has taken a well-deserved break and it is drawn by fill-in artist Shelli Paroline.

Don't get me wrong; her art is terrific and she does not put a foot wrong. She is easily the second best person to ever draw Muppet comics, but she's not Langridge, and I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that a fill-in artist helped out this month, since it is his name that sold this book to me. Let's face it; there was a tremendous amount of subpar entertainment sold to us with the Muppets' brand stuck on it until fairly recently. That Christmas TV movie last year, for instance.

Anyway, issue zero is the story of the "Pigs in Space" movie, as pitched by Fozzie and Rizzo in alternate order to a pair of not-so-anonymous studio executives, each interrupting and carrying on the storyline into nonsensical directions. Somehow, it's further interrupted by Muppet Labs and Muppet News Flash breaks which further comment on the Swinetrek's mission. I've forced the News Flash guy's "bigamy" pun on about ten people since I read this comic; it's brilliant.

I'm not sure I believe the Muppets really need an issue zero relaunch, but having read it, I was as charmed as I could have hoped. It's a dense, funny read, with a lot of action in a wild story that takes a good while to read. You don't often feel like you get your money's worth in modern mainstream American comics, but Langridge packs so many gags into the fast-moving story that it really satisfied me. This is really good stuff, highly recommended for readers of all ages.

The Louche and Insalubrious Escapades of Art D'Ecco

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded, and maybe you'd like to think about reading them as well. This time, a review of The Louche and Insalubrious Escapades of Art D'Ecco (Fantagraphics, 2006).



While I'm not certain I've ever encountered the words "louche" or "insalubrious" prior to this, I know that Roger Langridge is a huge Bookshelf favorite, and I'm always glad to stumble across his work. I found this a couple of months ago at McDonough's quite excellent Bunjee's Comics and spent a couple of days grimacing over 160-odd pages of the most ghastly, teeth-crackingly awful puns you've ever read. The back cover cogently points out that Langridge is a virus from outer space, and it's all downhill from there.

Originally serialized in the late 1980s across two periodical titles and two special editions, the comics in this book were a collaboration between Roger and his brother Andrew, who wrote the material and who perhaps can be blamed for all the lovely puns on every page. The structure is very loose, and each strip is little more than a skeleton to hang ridiculous comic interplay or neat disruptions of accepted panel layout. In one sequence, the story in the panels travels in a spiral around the page. In another, a character reaches outside the frame structure to retrieve an object from himself in another. When the characters are briefly imprisoned - by guards who resemble the Beagle Boys from Scrooge McDuck (and not far from the revelation that Karl Marx, making a quip about putting something on his bill, is actually Karl Barx in disguise) - Art d'Ecco actually grabs the panel borders, transforming the page into a prison cell.

As for the ostensible structure, we meet Mr. Art d'Ecco, a square-jawed oaf who apparently wants to be a 1920s dandy, but is held back more than a little by his idiot roommate, a triangular mess called the Gump. They get embroiled in one hot situation after another as the Langridges cook up ridiculous stories and adventures. Many of the larger details quickly fade into the background because the wild goings-on are so memorable and so odd, and so I can't really tell you what the plot of the sixty-page "La Trahison des Images" is, just that it's full of eyepopping visual gags and crazy wordplay. At one point, a familiar brick gets thrown, and you'll think, "Yeah, this is about as anarchic as Krazy Kat."

Put another way, this is a book where we meet a clean-up-teevee campaigner named Margie de Sade, who was once an actress who starred with Art as a character called Harlot Mascara. If you're with me in thinking that's about the best name for a character in all of fiction, then you need this book. Highly recommended.

Fin Fang Four Return!

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded, and maybe you'd like to think about reading them as well. This time, a review of Fin Fang Four Return! (Marvel, 2009).



Hey, have I mentioned how Roger Langridge is one of my favorite comic artists? I have? Several times? Well, let me mention it again. Fin Fang Four is an occasional project he and his former Doctor Who collaborator Scott Gray have released for Marvel, in which four former threats to humanity have been shrunk to more manageable size and get menial jobs in New York City. On those rare occasions that new installments arrive, they are the best thing that Marvel Comics releases these days.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Marvel released these silly and fun giant monster comics, in which the human race was faced with doom at the hands of beasties like Gorgilla, or Googam, the son of Goom. These were later incorporated into the company's superhero universe - I believe that they further aped the Godzilla concept by even giving them all their own "Monster Island" - but more often than not, they were wheeled out whenever it was necessary to protect the trademarks.

In the Fin Fang Four continuity, Gorgilla, Googam, the robot Elektro and the Chinese dragon Fin Fang Foom have all been shrunk by Reed Richards and the courts have ordered them to do community service. They have group therapy with Marvel's resident shrink, Doc Samson, and when they're not parking cars, they're scheming to get adopted by pop stars who collect orphans. And poor Elektro, mistaken for somebody else with the same name, finds out what becomes of D-list criminals from Spider-Man comics...

The Fin Fang Four books are just terrific. They're really funny reads which play with the sillier concepts of both modern pop culture and with the rules of the Marvel Universe. I know Langridge has a Muppets comic due every month now, but hopefully he'll have enough spare time to work a little on the side with these characters, and we'll see them again before too much longer. I certainly recommend you ask your local comic shop about getting a copy of this. Marvel needs to get the word that more lighthearted, fun books like this are what we'd like to see!

The Muppet Show Comic Book: The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson # 1

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of The Muppet Show Comic Book: The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson # 1 (Boom!Kids, 2009)



Well, this is great. As long as Boom! keeps releasing Roger Langridge Muppet Show comics in four-issue chunks, I'll get to mention Langridge in my blog four times a year, with each new first issue. Everybody wins!

I'm certain most of the Muppet fans among you have been following this series since it started, but if you've missed out, Langridge has been writing and drawing a mad little series set in the confines of the Muppet Theatre. Each issue is effectively one night's performance, with recurring appearances of "Pigs in Space" and the other skits, running commentary by Statler and Waldorf (who are on consistently fine form), and unbridled chaos backstage. This time, the mayhem is going to continue for a four-part arc, as Rizzo the Rat gets his crew involved in a project to dig up backstage to find a lost treasure. Meanwhile, both Kermit and Animal are undergoing strange new personality quirks. Kermit's new laid-back leather-n-shades look doesn't seem to have too heavy an impact on things, but Animal, now a well-dressed vegetarian who communicates in notecards and cannot keep time to save his life, is really bringing down the Electric Mayhem's sound, man. What the heck is going on?

If ever a comic I've told you about is a no-brainer, it's this one. You've got one of comics' most consistently entertaining creators telling hilarious tales of TV's best creations. It's so darn good you don't even miss the celebrity guest stars. Recommended for absolutely everybody!

The Big Book of the '70s

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of The Big Book of the '70s (DC / Paradox, 2000).



I used to love picking up these Big Books that DC used to publish in the late nineties. As with so many of their subsidiary and imprint publishers, however, they really flooded the market with the darn things, releasing close to two dozen over a period of about two years. That was a bit more than even fans like me could handle.

Each of the Big Books gives you close to 200 pages of comics, with several dozen artists tackling a story in around 2-5 pages each. This time out, you've got work from Bookshelf favorites like Sergio Aragonés, Roger Langridge and John Ridgway, among many others, illustrating tales of excess and bizarre behavior from the groovy decade. Everything from The Brady Bunch to the Son of Sam to the Symbionese Liberation Army is profiled within.

Seventies pop culture was often garish and ugly, but it sounded better than it looked, if you take my meaning. Maybe it was my own adolescent curiosity around the time of the 1980 election that made me want to make some kind of sense about the world around me, but I've always found the crazy news and culture of the period fascinating stuff, and enjoyed this Big Book thoroughly. I shouldn't have put off this collection for as long as I did!

Now to find a new copy of The Big Book of Conspiracies. I loaned mine out a couple of years back and don't remember to whom. Bah!

Leather Underwear

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Leather Underwear "#1" (Fantagraphics, 1990, this was actually the only issue).



This weekend, we were in Nashville and visited this very nice, new comic shop. And it was lovely, don't get me wrong, except that they didn't stock anything that any other comic shop couldn't get their hands on from the Previews catalog. No, for real treasures, you've got to find a store where you can get your hands grubby in a box full of old magazines. Atlanta's Book Nook on North Druid Hills is a perfect place for this. It's there that I found Roger Langridge's lovely 1990 effort here. It's 32 pages of gloriously mean-spirited, clever and funny comics, featuring the debut appearances of Sister Knuckles the Malevolent Nun.

Even more interesting, for those who met the character via the 2003 collection No More Mrs. Nice Nun, it turns out that her original ten-page appearance was substantially re-lettered and the dialogue rewritten. That was arguably a big improvement, but it's absolutely fascinating, archaeologically speaking, to see how Langridge found Knuckles' voice over time, and to look at the growing confidence in his artwork over the last couple of decades. Worth tracking down a copy!

Doctor Who: The Betrothal of Sontar

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Doctor Who: The Betrothal of Sontar (Panini, 2008).



Panini has released a pair of 100-page magazine collections of the more recent episodes of their long-running Doctor Who strip since the series returned. In fact, Christopher Eccleston only played the Doctor long enough to make it to about 100 pages of comics, so that's all the compilation that he'll ever get, but "The Betrothal of Sontar" is the first time that one of their big, lovely graphic novels is devoted to the modern series. It contains all of the Tenth Doctor & Rose strips from Doctor Who Magazine #365-377 plus one from the 2007 Storybook, and wraps up with the first post-Rose story "The Warkeeper's Crown" from #378-380, which features the return of the Brigadier along with longtime Eighth Doctor artist Martin Geraghty.

From a creators' standpoint, it really is a mixed bag. One thing that has made the strip so enthralling over its thirty-year run have been the lengthy runs by a consistent team, whether the original Mills/Wagner/Gibbons lineup, or the Parkhouse run of the Fifth and Sixth Doctors, or the terrific Gray/Geraghty run for the Eighth Doctor. The strip was at its weakest in the early 90s when it was without a regular team. Since 2005, it's had rotating writers and artists, and sometimes there are eye-rolling duds like Tony Lee's "F.A.Q." but the approach does have advantages. By letting the TV show dictate the subplots and continuity, the strip can focus more on high-concept adventures that no TV show's budget could manage, like John Tomlinson's titular adventure and Mike Collins' reality-warping "The Futurists."

That might seem an odd distinction, but it results in a mix of stories simply too wild for any TV budget and more amusing episodes that play with the modern series' character dynamics. Best of all is a one-off written by Gareth Roberts and drawn by Mike Collins and David Roach in which the Doctor spends a TARDIS-free weekend on the Powell Estate waiting for Rose to arrive, making Mickey completely miserable. It's a really hilarious little gem. A similar story, bidding farewell to this set of supporting characters and drawn by the great Roger Langridge, is a wonderful recap of everything that both drove us nuts and made Rose, Jackie and Mickey so endearing. It's a perfect companion to the TV series, and is certainly recommended for all Doctor Who fans.

The Muppet Show Comic Book # 1

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of The Muppet Show Comic Book # 1 (Boom, 2009).



I love it when a title meets your expectations. I really like both the Muppets and Roger Langridge's excellent work, so this was a property made in heaven for me. This isn't some jerryrigged fairytale or adaptation bent to fit the Muppets, but rather a brand-new episode of the 1970s Muppet Show, just told in a comic book rather than on TV.

Langridge uses the format wonderfully, with goofy transitions from scene to scene and appropriate backstage chaos surrounding the main story while the onstage action (including "Pigs in Space," a visit to the Swedish Chef's kitchen and a report from the planet Koosbane) somehow manages to be pulled off without anybody dying.

If I had any complaints, it would be that it felt a little short to me, and that the evening's special guest stars - to reveal them in a review would spoil a good joke - got really short-changed. Then I figured that there were two musical numbers by the guests which the comic didn't have the rights to "broadcast," sort of like "You've Got a Friend in Me" on the season one DVDs, and felt better about it.

Langridge packs each page with gags and puns and silliness. His characterization is dead-on and you won't be able to read the Swedish chef's dialogue out loud with a straight face. My favorite part was, as usual, Statler and Waldorf. While Langridge would never come right out and say it and spoil the mystique, I think we're pretty sure the reason why they keep coming to the darn theatre is because they really just love giving that bear a hard time. Recommended for Langridge fans, Muppet fans and families.

Muhyo and Who

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. This time, reviews, of sorts, of Muhyo & Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation volume one (Viz, 2007) and Doctor Who: Oblivion (Panini, 2006).



I was mentioning last week about how I bought lots of stuff from the AWA dealers' room. This was one; I spotted the cover and figured, correctly, that my eleven year-old son would enjoy it. Muhyo & Roji's BSI, which concluded a seven-year run in Shonen Jump earlier this year, is simply perfect for his reading bracket, but it really failed to gel with me. Detailing the reasons why the drama failed for me would be like kicking a Goosebumps book for not providing a really good resolution to its teenage wolfman story, or a Harry Potter book for any one of its tedious moments. This isn't intended for grown-ups.

The stories by Yoshiyuki Nishi reach their high points with the revelation of the horrific beast-of-the-week, a critter which will then be instantly and effortlessly dispatched by Muhyo. The art isn't at all appealing, although Nishi has a fine sense of pacing the horrific buildup to each episode's new monster. I won't be continuing with the series, although my son has expressed an interest in picking them up himself. Recommended for middle schoolers.



Continuing to work my way through the complete comic adventures of the Eighth Doctor, I was very pleased to reread this third volume, which starts with one of the best bait-and-switches that Doctor Who has ever pulled, when a new character who seems to be the obvious new companion pulls the twist that you should have seen coming, but then there's a follow-up to that which is still, after all this time, chuckle-inducing in its audaciousness.

"Oblivion" is a really good set of excellently-told stories, ably mixing plot threads from both the earlier comics and the original TV series and presenting a Doctor that we never got to know as well as we should have. And I tell you, if there's a finer Doctor Who moment than when the ghost of Frida Kahlo's father menaces the Doctor's companion, while he's in a graveyard with Diego Rivera on the Day of the Dead fighting aliens, I can't think of it. Highly recommended.

(Originally posted November 03, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

The Two Doctors

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. This time, reviews, of sorts, of Doctor Who: The Glorious Dead (Panini, 2006) and Doctor 13: Architecture and Mortality (DC, 2007).



I've been rereading the complete run of Eighth Doctor adventures (sidelining, for now, the most recently released World Shapers), and grudgingly have to admit that this one is the weakest of the four collections. That's not to say it's without a great deal of charm, as two light-hearted one-offs, each illustrated by Roger Langridge, demonstrate. Langridge also got to tackle a three-part story called "The Autonomy Bug" which concerns a hospital full of incarcerated robots who might be demonstrating sentience, and this brilliant little lump-in-the-throat story is as good as Doctor Who ever gets. Scott Gray handles cliffhangers amazingly well; there's a moment where the same guy that we've been thinking is an alien time traveller wakes up in bed with his friend Grace Holloway having dreamt the whole thing, and that's just flooring. But heavens, the titular epic, all ten agonizing parts of it, evokes the worst of bloated Marvel storytelling, with two opponents locked in a battle of wills for some nebulous, reality-shaping MacGuffin. Even without the specifics, it feels overly familiar and unsurprising. Recommended with reservations.



DC Comics has published thousands of stories featuring thousands of characters over the decades, but every so often they revise their internal continuity into one squished order of things, and some worlds, tales and oddball characters devised by creators no longer actively working don't find favor, and therefore don't find a place in the new scheme of things. Doctor Thirteen was one of these guys, a short-tempered loudmouth ultra-skeptic, sort of what you'd get if James Randi started acting like Sean Hannity. But he was trying to tell a world of Phantom Strangers, Supermen and Sandmen that there were no such things as ghosts, aliens or other-dimensional superbeings, and that simply stopped making sense a long time ago.

Brian Azzarello's weirdly compelling little story receieved enough positive reviews for me to want to read it, and I'm glad I did, even if I knew too much about it going in. Heaven only knows how much more I would have enjoyed it had I been following its original appearance in 2006-07 in a miniseries anthology with the top-billed The Spectre, a comic I still have no interest in reading. Suffice it to say that over the course of the series, with the assistance of several other timelost fictional properties who are also on the losing end of the argument as to whether they should "exist," Dr. Thirteen learns a lot more about his odd place in his even odder universe, and Azzarello doesn't mince words letting the "architects" of the current DC Universe know that whatever hard-and-fast rules they'd like to nail down for their playthings, they'll just be rewritten by somebody else in fifteen years. The art by Cliff Chiang is just gorgeous; I wish they'd get that guy on a book that I'd like to read. Highly recommended.

(Originally posted September 22, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Doctor Who: The Flood

Here's how this works: I finish reading a comic collection, and I tell you about it, and I try not to go on too long.



The fourth and final collection of Panini's Who comics (the ones that predate the BBC kids' comic I mentioned earlier), this covers the final two years of the Eighth Doctor stories in Doctor Who magazine. Absolutely wonderful work from a host of talented creators, with some additional "director's cut" pages filling out two of the stories, and detailed commentary, including the abandoned plans to have the Paul McGann Doctor regenerate into Christopher Eccleston in the comic!

It's about 250 oversized color pages on nice paper, and is highly recommended.

(Originally posted August 9, 2007 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Doctor Who: Oblivion

I've mentioned before - I'm sure I have - how much I enjoy the excellent Doctor Who comic. Well, I started reading the third of four collections of the Eighth Doctor strips, and however good it had been, it kicks into overdrive in this set. While Paul McGann only got a single shot at playing the Doctor on TV, Scott Gray was the principal writer, helming a nine-year run of really great comics starring the character. Gray and his artists do a simply amazing job pulling the rug completely out from under you. I couldn't put the book down for a good while, and left it with a cliffhanger in a story where the ghost of Frida Kahlo's father is swatting the Doctor's companion Izzy across the room, and the Doctor's stuck in a cemetary surrounded by space aliens that look like skeletons.

There's an absolutely beautiful bait-and-switch in the first story. There, we meet this girl who couldn't have been more obvious a NEW COMPANION if that was her name and she was wearing a HEY, DOCTOR, PICK ME shirt. Except, no. Not even close. I'm still chuckling about how audacious a move that was, and how it's going to play out. Well, damn.

Anyway, the book's called Oblivion and you can order it by clicking the picture.

It cheered me up a good deal - good, surprising fiction tends to - and I got a good night's sleep and as I'm typing this sentence, I see that the customer who failed to get something I needed in has just done so. Well, now I can get that finished and then continue getting ahead of this month like an awesome little drone.

(Originally posted May 1, 2007 at hipsterdad's LJ.)