Hey kids! DC Comics, Frankenstein and parts of Black Canary have a reminder for you:

From DC Comics' Futures End #0 

Review: Wolverine and The X-Men Vol. 5

The fifth collection of the Jason Aaron-written, many artist-illustrated X-Men series set at the Jean Grey school highlights one of the aspects of the book that have helped make it such a welcome and engaging X-Men comic: Superhero school sitcom premise aside, it is really more of a straightforward superhero book than a Marvel mutant book; the characters occasionally deal with threats and conflicts that aren't completely reliant on their being mutants or X-Men.

That is, they don't continuously cycle through Magneto, Apocalypse and Mister Sinister as villains, or spend all their time fighting for survival against mutant hate groups and anti-mutant religious and political leaders. Sometimes they fight Swarm (at least for a page), often they deal with space aliens, and once in a while they encounter something like Frankenstein's Murder Circus, the conflict that dominates this collection, which includes #19-#24. (That's only six issues, but they're drawn by three different pencil artists, five inkers and three colorists; I guess that's the result of the accelerated shipping, and why this series is technically called "Wolverine and The X-Men By Jason Aaron" in collected form).

Now, Frankenstein and his Murder Circus are in the book because of links to other, recurring X-Men villains: The Monster is hunting down and killing all of his makers' descendants, the last of whom is a member of the current incarnation of The Hellfire Club (the evil kids that have been the main antagonists of this series so far), and the witch whose magic is powering the circus has a connection to another evil X-Men character who will apparently play a big role in the X-Men title that Aaron will spin-out of this one (and was featured in the last X-Men movie; his design in this volume reflecting that design). But it's a threat that could have just as easily faced the Fantastic Four or The Avengers; with a little tinkering to shed some copyrighted characters and trademarked names, it could have stood as its own, as an original invention of Aaron's, designed and illustrated by Bradshaw.

That three-issue arc finds the students awaking one day to a completely teacher-less school. The faculty—Beast, Iceman, Kitty Pryde, Warbird, Rachel Grey, Doop, Toad and brand-new headmistress Storm are all performing in the circus, with little or no memory of who they really are, each with an act at least somewhat related to their names and powers. As for the title character? That would be Revolto The Clown, who is brutally beaten by zombie clowns, only to have his healing factor keep him from dying at the end of each show.

It's up to the students, including the new recruits Shark Girl and Eye Boy, to awaken their teachers, save the townsfolk and combat the sinister circus.

Now that's an image worthy of a two-page splash.

I suppose that, theoretically, someone somewhere could really quibble with Aaron's treatment of Frankenstein, who looks, talks and acts quite different in this particular story than in at least the last dozen times I've seen him in Marvel Comics, although this is the same monster (There's a panel of him in his furry vest, and a line of dialogue where The Legion of Monsters is mentioned). In terms of the Wolverine and The X-Men, it hardly matters; and I don't know that the character has had any sort of internal logic that really needs govern his appearances, as he's basically just a perpetual guest-star anyway.

Bradshaw's version sure is a snappy dresser, anyway.

Bradshaw draws the entire Murder Circus art, and it's all-around great, even impeccable stuff. He's perfectly suited to superheroics, horror, action and humor, and this story calls on him to do them all—often on the same page.

While the story makes up the bulk of this volume, it's book-ended by others. The trade opens with a nice post-Avengers vs. X-Men issue, in which we check in with various players and get a sense of the new status quo. There are new students like the aforementioned Eye Boy and another who will become Sprite in the next volume; Beast is desperately trying to save the life of Broo, who was seemingly shot dead at the end of the last volume; Wolverine and Rachel are hunting for his killers; his killers are setting up shop near the school; and Kitty Pryde is interviewing potential new teachers from throughout the Marvel Universe.

That last bit is basically just an issue-long running gag, and Kitty's a little too curt to be taken seriously, shouting "Next!" like a casting agent, but it does give us the opportunity to see how Bradshaw draws a whole mess of different Marvel characters, and hear a joke or four about each.

These include, among others, Blade, Sasquatch, Puck, Dr. Nemesis, Longshot, Spider-Man, Gorilla Man, Deadpool (repeatedly) and so on (Bradshaw's Ghost Rider skull and his Sasquatch are both particularly accomplished). The job goes to Storm, though, seen here with Kitty rubbing her breasts in her crotch.

That's followed by a one-issue story drawn by Steve Sanders (wait, that can't be right, can it?), in which we meet new mutant Shark Girl, who Angel manages to recruit to the Jean Grey Academy before Mystique and the Silver Samurai can recruit her for the new villain school for mutants that the bad guys are apparently setting up.

Then, after the Murder Circus storyline, there's another done-in one, this one drawn by David Lopez and Alvaro Lopez, which is another sort of catch-up story, set after the events of All-New X-Men (Time-lost teen Jean Grey shows up for a scene with Quentin Quire, for example, and Beast's new ape-ish look is seen in this title for the first time; it's a shame, given how good Bradshaw drew a lion-like Beast). It's mostly soap opera stuff, with various pairings of characters going on dates, discuss their relationships and kissing in one way or another.

As always, Aaron's writing is super-strong, and while the art in this issue may be the weakest in this particular collection, it's not like it's bad or anything. This is the second consecutive trade to close with a shocking cliffhanger involving Broo, too.

Dick Briefer's Frankenstein in Roger Langridge's Muppet Show Comic Book

In the third issues of Boom Kids' The Muppet Show Comic Book, collected in the trade The Muppet Show Comic Book: On The Road, Speedy Delivery Service drops off a very large, heavy package at the Muppet Theater, "Special Fright."

"Don'tcha mean special freight?" Pops asks, setting up the visual pun in the panel above. Does that particular rendition of that Frankenstein's monster look familiar? The appearance of his nose high above his eyeballs certainly calls to mind Dick Briefer's strikingly idiosyncratic version of the monster in his Frankenstein comics.

A second brief cameo of a Briefer-esque Frankenstein, this one even more closely resembling Briefer's monster, occurs in The Muppet Show Comic Book #11, which I previously reviewed here and which is collected in The Muppet Show Comic Book: Muppet Mash:

Review: The Muppet Show Comic Book #11

I’ve been avoiding writing about The Muppet Show Comic Book lately, primarily because I’ve been trying not to read single issues of it and instead enjoy it in the trade collections Boom has been putting out with clockwork regularity, but also because I assume readers get bored hearing me repeat how excellent the same book is on a monthly basis.

I had to make an exception for #11 though, because how can you say no to that cover?
Beaker as Frankenstein’s monster, his dead eyes just begging me to read this issue, trade-waiting be damned!

So, um, not to bore you by repeating how excellent Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show Comic Book is or anything, but Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show Comic Book? It’s still excellent.

Langridge continues to exploit the storyline backstage, skits-on-the-stage format, here making most of the on-stage skits more-or-less integral to the backstage storyline…everything fits in this comic book in a way that is both satisfying and reassuring.

It’s a dark and stormy night at the Muppet Theatre, made all the darker by Doctor Honeydew’s latest experiment: Beaker Mark 2, a robot Beaker designed to “take the load off poor Beaker’s tired, tired shoulders." (This being Honeydew and Beaker, of course, it’s followed quickly by a Mark 3 and Mark 4).

Honeydew’s power surges (and a few unlikely coincidences) also lead to Miss Piggy sporting Elsa Lanchester hair, Gonzo getting an Igor-esque hunchback, and his chickens turning into a pitchfork-bearing mob.

On-stage, a Frankenstein’s monster Muppet serves as the guest-star, visiting Vetrinarian’s Hospital and singing a duet with Sweetums and, in one rather neat panel, appearing as part of the Frankenbop Quartet, four Frankenstein’s monsters, including Dick Breifer’s funny version of the monster* in a stealth cameo.

I’m not sure if this is Langridge’s best issue of the series so far (It’s hard to beat that first one, with the “Holy shit, I can’t believe he’s doing this!” revelation of a one-man comic-book production of the Muppet Show TV show that was both faithful and transformed, in keeping with the spirit of the corporate-controlled characters, but highly idiosyncratic…or that heart-breaking Gonzo issue), but it’s gotta be one of the better ones, and it was certainly my favorite so far (Perhaps on account of the fact that it featured so prominently my personal favorite characters).

As a loosely holiday-themed, done-in-one issue—not that there’s ever too much continuity or soap opera in these things, but some storylines do carry over from issue to issue—The Muppet Show Comic Book #11 seem like a perfect jumping on or testing-out issue. So if you’ve yet to try out Langdrige’s Muppet comics, this is an ideal one to sample. Even if you didn’t grow up with the characters and even if you don’t have much interest in them, if you’re in to great cartooning and great terrible jokes, then you should dig it.



*Speaking of which, this recently came out. I bet it’s pretty good.

Finally, a children's picture book with a very important moral:

Writer/artist Neil Numberman's Do Not Build a Frankenstein! (Greenwillow Books) is a charmingly straightforward picture book, with an important moral to teach (see the title). It's one of those picture books that hovers between traditional picture books and comics, although I think it's far closer to the latter.

Some of the words appear as prose text within and around images, but if these were encased in little yellow boxes, we'd just call 'em narration boxes and think this thing was perfectly comic-book-y. All of the dialogue spoken by anyone other than the protagonist/narrator, and quite a bit of his dialogue, occurs within traditional comic book dialogue bubbles. Many of the pages function as giant panels (the edges of the pages functioning as the borders)
while others are broken up into multiple images per page, with the white space between the images serving as implied panel borders.

That narrator/protagonist is a pretty normal looking boy, who's only distinguishable from all the neighborhood kids by the dirt on his face, and the anxious look on his face. He's called all the kids out to a snowy field, where he stands upon a wooden crate, and delivers his message, on an two-page spread that's an extreme close-up: "Do not build a Frankenstein!"

"Trust me," he goes on. "I know. I tried. You must dedicate your entire life to building a Frankenstein. You must research...built a laboratory...and find the right parts."

The kid tells the others about how it might seem fun having your own patchwork monster at first, but it can get sort of annoying after awhile (his monster never rebels against him or drowns any little girls in a lake or anything terrible like that though; it mostly just acts like a big, clumsy, super-strong little brother).

The kid builds a compelling case, although Numberman's important message regarding the not-building of Frankenstiens is somewhat undercut by the expected (but still amusing) twist ending.

Numberman's character design is a lot of fun, with his children possessing huge round heads—giving him plenty of space to work in exaggerated, easy-to-read expressions, and spindly, boneless limbs attached too little bodies (There's something very Muppet-like about his human children).

His Frankenstein's monster is a refreshingly original design. He's green and has bolts in his neck, but the only real sign that he's been stitched together form grave-robbed body parts are the quilt-like patches he sports here and there. I like how he's all arms and torso, with just a tiny bullet-shaped head and a lower body that looks a little like an upside down football goal post.

Numberman creates all this in water color, and there's a neat, homemade feel to the art. The drawings are simply rendered, but there's complex workings beneath them all, and the uneven weight of the water-colors is left visible, so that each page looks a little like something a kid might have brought home from school—if the kid was very, very talented (Or, put another way, it looks like if you locked Numberman in a grade school art room, he could have made this book in there with no trouble).

The "camera" moves in and out from full-page medium shots to extreme two-page splash close-ups to multiple long-shots per page, giving the book a fast, hurried pace that pushes the story along quickly and making sure something jumps out at the reader on a very regular basis.

It's all around great work, and one of the best picture books I've read in a while.



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If those couple images pique your interest, I'd definitely recommend you pay a visit to neilnumberman.com, and check out the images and comics he has filed under "comics," "kids" and "portfolio." There's some super-weird stuff in there, and his Che Guevara comic under "portfolio" is pretty awesome.

Wonder Woman tells the worst bed time stories...

"His monstrous steed snatched me up in its jaws, its teeth, each as long and sharp as my sword, squeezed about my middle so hard I was afraid I'd be squeezed in two. Gallons of its saliva, hot like boiling water, splashed against my skin, and I thought I'd drown in the scent of its foul breath. That's when I saw him astride its back...a giant, man-like monster made of stitched together corpses. In his left hand he held a sword, with which he had just lopped the head off of my own steed, drawing an arc of viscous red gore that hit the ground with a wet slap.

"Well, good night kids. Sweet dreams."



(Images from Final Crisis #7 written by Grant Morrison, penciled by Doug Mahnke and inked by every artists in the 10019 zip code)