Bart Simpson # 54

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 Bart Simpson # 54 (Bongo, 2010)



Sad to say that we're coming to an end of the big stacks of Simpsons comics that have been teetering around this house for years; only medium-sized stacks await us in the future. I told my son to make some changes in the various subscriptions that I finance and to have his mother pick up some slack from stores in Louisville - she won't, of course - and so he has elected to scale back to just one monthly title from Bongo's line. The bimonthly Bart Simpson got the axe and so we picked up our last issue, for now, from Bizarro Wuxtry in Athens. Not that Louisville's lacking a good funnybook store - their Great Escape branch is terrific - but I don't think there's any way in hell we can get his mother to send money to Athens for Bart Simpson comics.

I think it's pretty bad timing on everybody's part. Not only has the Simpsons' publisher, Bongo, finally got a website up and running, but the Bart title has gotten stronger with each issue thanks to regular contributions from cartoonists and creators not normally seen on licensed properties. I was unfamiliar with Carol Lay and Peter Kuper despite extensive credits in comics, but they both contributed really funny stuff in Bart Simpson # 54. Kuper's story, in which a firecracker explosion leaves Bart deaf, mute, color blind and an easy target for the unscrupulous Mr. Burns, is a real scream.

I'm more familiar with Sergio Aragonés, of course, and he has his standard single page comic in each issue that's always worth seeing. Evan Dorkin, best known for Milk & Cheese and his never-published-frequently-enough Dork!, also has a few pages, and, oddly, the only thing that I didn't like about them is the lettering. Something had struck me as "off" about the pages, and when Dorkin mentioned on his blog last week that deadline doom had forced him to turn in a comic recently for somebody else to letter, that's when it clicked. This is a really funny little story, but the trademark Simpsons lettering, oddly, just doesn't do the mayhem justice.

I think Bongo's line is a no-brainer. Three bucks gets you some clever little comics packed with in-jokes and silliness suitable for everybody with a funny bone. Happily recommended.

Simpsons Comics # 163

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 Simpsons Comics # 163 (Bongo, 2010)



You know, every so often, I see a little bit of The Simpsons on TV. I remain completely baffled why millions continue to watch it instead of buying these much, much better funnybooks. That's not to say most of these comics are all that amazing, but compared to how mediocre the TV cartoon has become, they really do shine.

Usually, I just read my son's copy, grin a little and pass it on, but when Sergio Aragonés has some work in the comic, it's time to settle back and get ready for something tremendously silly and entertaining. For pages absolutely packed full of characters and sight gags, exploding with energy and chaos, there's nobody in Sergio's class.

The plot, and, perhaps surprisingly, something as frenetic as this has one, has to do with the town of Springfield suffering one panic after another thanks to an escalating series of crises at the nuclear plant. Seems that somebody's been sleeping at the job, resulting in one world-ending alarm after another. By the time it's finished, Kent Brockman's ratings have skyrocketed, Moe's beer taps have run dry and Hans Moleman has found a little love, and all three find themselves, bafflingly, in Homer's debt. If you honestly think there's been a better installment of The Simpsons since September, 1997, you're just flat out wrong. Recommended.

Bart Simpson #50

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 Bart Simpson # 50 (Bongo, 2009).



Earlier in the week, Chris Butcher, manager of Toronto's simply superb bookstore The Beguiling, published a fascinating essay on the problems of "all ages" comics in a marketplace dominated by child-unfriendly superhero stories. As a dad whose son beat a hasty retreat from the increasingly desperate DC Comics into the more sensible climes of Bongo ages ago, I found it a truly interesting read. And with the fiftieth issue of Bart Simpson, Bongo has come up with something flatly unmissable for anybody who likes fun comics, regardless of your age: they've got Sergio Aragonés onboard to write and draw the title.

In a way, it's almost like symmetry to have him working on The Simpsons. I'm of the opinion that the last really watchable season of that show, over half its life ago, was the one with the episode where they went to New York and Bart ever-so-briefly visited the offices of Mad.

I've been reading my son's Simpsons collection for quite some time now, and the comics are only sporadically great, but they're certainly good enough to pass the time without frustration. This issue, which features several short stories, is easily the best of Bongo's titles I've ever read, even bettering the one that pretended to be an anthology of other countries' Simpsons comics. The lead story starts with a bored Bart and Milhouse spitting on passing cars before tedium leads them to start designing a rocket. Professor Frink offers well-intended assistance, but, in much the same way kids will lose interest if you try and direct them towards particular comic books, grown-ups ruin everything, building up to a wonderful double-page spread packed with dozens and dozens of interested parties surrounding the house on Evergreen Terrace. I know that Aragonés is billed as the world's fastest cartoonist, and having seen him prove that for the crowd at UGA earlier this year, I believe it, but this double-page spread must have taken him at least the better part of an hour.

Put simply, this is a comic so fun that I'll happily buy two copies: one that I have ordered to have for my son's collection when he returns home after a few months with his mom, and one to give him to read while he's up there. It's one of Mad's greatest artists drawing the ultimate middle school boys' comics. Setting aside the reality that kids that age, as I say, tend to lose interest in anything you suggest for them, if you've got a middle schooler in your life, you've no business not buying this, for them or yourself.

(Note: Normally when I post a review, I include a link in the image so curious readers may order it from Amazon, or, if not, a link to the publisher. However, Bongo Comics does not appear to operate a web site (?!?!), so the link goes to the SNPP fan site. If you'd like to read this comic, and you should, please stop by a local comic book shop and ask for it by name!)

Showcase Presents Bat Lash

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 Showcase Presents Bat Lash (DC, 2009).



I was looking forward to this book for several reasons. For starters, I hadn't read a single page that's been reprinted in it before. I was familiar with the character of Bat Lash, a Western dandy of a gunslinger, from some appearances he'd made in some of DC's other cowboy comics in the early 1980s. I enjoyed at least the concept of a flower-loving drifter who repeatedly gets caught up in violent skirmishes in crowded saloons, but never saw his original appearances.

Much later on, I learned the character was co-created by the great Sergio Aragonés and drawn by the great Nick Cardy, and DC has finally reprinted all of his original adventures in one handy Showcase Presents volume, and it's a cracker. I've always enjoyed Cardy's work, but there are some pages in here which knocked me on my socks. Most memorable is a great splash page where the camera is above a crowd of kids scampering around the roof rafters looking down on a big mob of people below them with their guns drawn on Bat Lash, and it's just a marvel to see such a vibrant, original composition in what could have been a much more humdrum drawing.

Most of the stories are co-written by Aragonés and Denny O'Neil, and they're all incredibly entertaining. Bat Lash is, at his core, a hippie a hundred years early. He just moseys from place to place playing cards, picking flowers and romancing the ladies, not wanting to get into trouble but finding astonishing amounts of it. He's not too far removed from Maverick, which remains, more than half a century later, one of the nine or ten best shows ever made for American TV, so I think that's a good comparison to make. It's got that same sense of subversion, putting a protagonist in play who really doesn't want to do anything heroic, but acts out of self-interest and a rascally desire to undercut authority.

Bat Lash was not a hit back in the sixties. The character first appeared in an issue of the original Showcase anthology before getting his own series, which only lasted seven issues and was canceled in 1969. This collection reprints all eight, along with two later appearances. One of these was a 1978 story that appeared in a later anthology series, written by O'Neil, and another was a three-part adventure scripted by Len Wein that appeared as a backup feature across three issues of Jonah Hex in 1981. Even without Aragonés and Cardy, these are still very good, entertaining stories.

The collection is one of two currently available in DC's Showcase Presents line which have gained the fan nickname "Skinny Showcases." Instead of the usual 500 pages for $17, these reprint about 250 pages for ten bucks. It's an ideal solution for characters like Bat Lash who don't have a great deal of material available for reprinting, but the stories are so darn good they deserve to be seen again. Honestly, the originals are clearly among the best comics that DC published in the 1960s, and so ten bucks is a pretty small price to pay to see them again. Highly recommended.

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!

Fanboy

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 Fanboy (DC, 2001).



When Fanboy, a very silly miniseries by Mark Evanier and the great artist Sergio Aragonés, set in the sidelines of the DC Universe and featuring a hero-obsessed comic shop employee fighting censorship and being oblivious to the girl who loves him, was originally released in 1999, I was not interested in trying it. That's despite all the fun guest art by the likes of Russ Heath, Gil Kane, Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland and Bruce Timm illustrating various fantasies and daydreams of our hero, the geeky Finster. I plead being a boring person and not really noticing it, and not having been led back to the usual Mad Magazine gang of idiots by my son yet.

Well, three months back, we went to see the artist give a lecture and receive the Jack Davis Distinguished Artist award at UGA and popped by Bizarro Wuxtry beforehand so that my son could get something new signed beyond the older books he owns. (You did read about that, didn't you?) Bizarro had the collected edition of Fanboy along with several of Sergio's other books, so I bought a copy for my son, and he finally let me read it a couple of weeks ago.

I think the most honest way to describe this book is that it's incredibly sweet, with a relaxed pace and a desire to make readers smile. I don't believe I laughed out loud while reading it, but I spent a lunch hour with it and grinned from start to finish. There are points where the motions are not at all original - hey, Finster, guess what, the girl you're crazy about will never feel the same for you - but it's all done with such style and such a light touch that it seems fresh and different. In some ways, it feels like the inverse of Kyle Baker's fabulous Plastic Man comic from a few years back. There, Baker was bludgeoning the sacred cows of the DC Universe in a wild, over-the-top manner. Aragonés and Evanier's decision to gently tease conventions results in something nowhere as raucous, but nonetheless very satisfying. Recommended for all ages.