The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror: Hoodoo Voodoo Brouhaha

This instalment of the popular Simpsons Halloween special is introduced by Comic Book Guy, someone who knows something about a wasted life. He’s prepared a list of things that scare him most – “A slobbering child in the vicinity of a near mint-condition Golden Age comic book,” “What may lurk beneath my beard” – and concludes it with this observation:

But what scares me the most? Poorly executed comic books. Every piece of awful graphic literature that I’ve read cannot be unread. The hours spent cannot be added back to my lifespan. And since much of what I read is awful, said mediocrity has eaten up approximately 17.4 years of my allotted time on Earth. Sooner or later, the days I have left to live will be in deficit to the amount of times I have spent reading paper drive classics like “David Niven Adventures” or “Radioactive Man Vs. The New York Times Crossword Puzzle.” This realization chills me to the bone.

This is the same sort of accounting that I think gives every dedicated reader pause. It may not chill us to the bone, but it does force us to reflect and do a bit of mental accounting. And then we soldier on . . .

I’m a big fan of the Simpsons comics. For all their being a glossy corporate media product, they’ve somehow managed to stay inventive and fun. In particular, the Treehouse of Horrors – a flagship event for the TV show – really lets them go all out with a variety of different stories and art. There are quick pieces like Comic Book Guy’s Best Costumes Ever and Professor Frink’s Hyper-Science Halloween Hi-Jinx and Party Pranks, and parody movie posters (Planet of the Apus, Night of the Living Ned, Teacher from the Black Lagoon). And then there are longer stories, often riffing on established properties like “Krustina” (a haunted clown car that’s a take-off of Christine), “From Hell and Back” (a parody of the Alan Moore comic From Hell and the movie they made out of it), and “The Cask of Amontilla-D’oh” (Poe’s famous tale recast with Moe taking out his frustrations over Homer’s unpaid bar bills). There’s even one story that’s told entirely in the form of limericks, “The Power Plant of Pain.” Though it’s the art that’s the best part of that one.

If I had a knock against this particular book it’s that the stories, while always clever and amusing, weren’t that funny. It’s a handsome production (being a big-media publication has its advantages!), the ideas they came up with were great, and the art is first-rate all the way through, but there were few laughs. It’s not the best Simpsons volume then, or even their best Treehouse of Horrors, but I still enjoyed every bit of it.

Graphicalex