Simpsons Comics Jam-Packed Jamboree

The Simpsons have been with us for so long that a list of minor recurring characters from the show would likely be as long as the tax rolls in some small towns. And yet, even though it’s been years if not decades since I watched the show, I can identify all of them, or nearly all of them, as soon as they’re introduced. Examples showing up several times in this collection include Dr. Nick (catchphrase: “Hi everybody!”), Gil the worn-down salesman, and Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. Hell, I even remember the Cletus song.

But I said I recognized nearly all of these guys because I had no recollection of Dr. Colossus. This sent me to the Internet to see if maybe he was introduced sometime after I stopped watching, but actually he’s been around since 1994.

I didn’t even notice Dr. C the first time he shows up in this collection, when he briefly appears with his mother before Judge Marge. But then it’s easy to miss things in these comics as they often have so many gags appearing even within a single cell that you have to squint and read the fine print to catch them. As usual, the stories are pure zaniness, giving you no idea where they’re heading aside from the fact that at the end normalcy (or what passes for normalcy in Springfield) will be re-established, with the Simpson family as indestructible as ever. Which makes you wonder at their evolution from what were, at the time, subversive roots, into something so conservative you could even think of them as an institution. Though after nearly fifty years that may be a natural progression.

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