Bongo Hits (and misses)

Comic Book Guy seemed to be a miniseries with great promise, and the first issue with it's multitude of covers and the story inside kind of lived up to it.  But things faded fast. The 4th of 5 issues wasn't funny, wasn't understandable, whatever it was supposed to spoof was hard to find.  At least with the fifth issue things rebounded some. The grand reveal didn't make any sense but it wasn't supposed to, and I had a smile on my face while reading it instead of a look of utter mystification.  Bongo does better with Futurama #51, which is a typically amusing issue that takes us from the Donner party to Vegemite in entertaining fashion. 

Bongo is much more successful with the delightful laugh-filled joyful holiday romp in issue #172. The script is from a not-obvious source, the longtime writer Mike W Barr, whom I associate with various DC heroes over the years or with his own Maze Agency "fair play" mystery comics. This issue of The Simpsons so thoroughly captures the tone and humor of the best episodes of the TV show that I think he should be writing for it. From a Krusty Kuisine TV dinner with a "treif magnifique" on the box to the true meaning of Xmas Comics or the disease named XMAAS, from Rush Limbaugh to a threat like "you will sing like the cast of a Bollywood musical ... unless you wish to sample the joys of cheese ichor" this is a gleeful issue.

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