Simpsons Comics Unchained

I first read Matt Groening when I was in university in the late 1980s and his strip “Life in Hell” was appearing in one of the alt-entertainment weeklies. It was the only thing worth reading in that rag. Everyone thought it was really funny. It was just after this, however, that The Simpsons took off and Groening became mainstream, the name behind a franchise.

I don’t begrudge him any of his success, as the TV show The Simpsons, at least in the early days, was really very funny. I haven’t seen it in twenty years, but I hope it’s still going strong. And the comics are good too. The question I had reading Unchained is whether Groening himself has anything much to do with them. And the reason I ask is because his name is on every credits page, even though he’s always given a joke title like “Reformed Nerd,” “Cue Card Boy,” or “Lard Lad’s Best Customer.” I had to wonder if there was some legal reason for that. Because he wasn’t writing or drawing or colouring, I think all he’d normally get a credit for is as publisher, or for “characters created by” (just as every Batman comic even today has to credit Bob Kane for creating Batman). So I just don’t know.

In any event, this is a selection of stories taken from the pages of The Simpsons comic, specifically issues #36-#42. There’s not much in the way of connective tissue, though many of the stories deal with members of the family getting in trouble with the law. So that fits with the jailbreak theme of the cover. Overall it’s a typical Simpsons effort, with a gag in nearly every panel, and sometimes several, and with even more hidden in with the fine print (which in one instance I honestly couldn’t read without a magnifying glass because I guess I’m getting too old for this stuff). Some pieces land better than others. I thought the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory spoof got away from them and the Jabberwocky send-up didn’t work. The story where Homer and the Comic Book Guy go to court was one of the better ones, in part because comic nerd-dom has always been close to the heart of the franchise.

I don’t think the line-up here is as good as that found in the Colossal Compendiums or the Treehouse of Horrors comics. I felt these stories were more like B-sides than the best of the best. But it was enjoyable enough while it lasted.

Graphicalex