The Smurfs Christmas (Family Comic Friday)

The Smurfs Christmas is a festive collection of several shorts. 3 directly involved Christmas. One mentions writing letters to Santa and is set during wintertime. Another involves snowmen, which are holiday icons. And then we've got that one story that involves a very hungry ogre.

Story #1 sees Santa down with a case of the flu. Knowing Gargamel is a sorcerer, Claus seeks a potion to help him complete his rounds. The dastardly medicine man finds opportunity to kidnap Santa and become the Jolly Old Fatman in hopes of infiltrating the Smurf village and stealing some for his Christmas dinner. 

Story #2 finds Gargamel captured by a hungry ogre. Thinking quickly, the fiend convinces the ogre that Smurfs make better tasting meals. There's quite a bit of tension as the Ogre with Gargamel still in his clutches, inch closer to Smurf village!

Story #3 starts off with a the Smurfs building snowmen. With warmer weather in the forecast, the snowmen come alive, trying to make it to the safety of the frigid Northern lands. But an encounter with Gargamel results in the snowmen betraying their Smurf creators.

Story #4 has the Smurfs exploring their nearby territory. Things are awfully quiet with all the woodland creatures taking warm refuge from the winter weather. All this quiet results in Sleepy Smurf cuddling up in a dormouse hutch. As the rest of the Smurfs write their letters to Santa, Sleepy Smurf and friend find themselves unknowingly the target of a hungry poacher- because they're sleeping through their entire predicament!!!

Story #5 stars Lumberjack Smurf who while looking for the perfect Christmas tree, almost chops down a talking pine. Turns out that the verbose tree is actually a little girl who was turned into a conifer by a witch. 

The final tale is a reunion between Gargamel and Santa. Faced with being on the naughty list again, the wizard can earn a gift for Christmas if he delivers gifts to all the Smurfs. But should he fall into temptation, Gargamel will be turned into an earthworm!

When I grew up, religious groups proclaimed the Smurfs to be agents of the devil. There's a little bit of magic in the book. It's mostly Gargamel's doing. Papa Smurf does refer to a book of prophecy in the Orge story. But by the end of it, he burns the book wanting to make his own destiny. There is some Looney Tunes level slapstick. That's mostly at the hands of Jokey Smurf and his love of those exploding gift boxes. 

What got on my nerves was the progressive use of the word 'Smurf'. It's gently sprinkled into the vocabulary in the first couple of tales. By the end of this book, it literally peppered it to the point of overuse. I mean, it smurfingly smurfed getting on my smurfing smurfs! (Hopefully, you get my drift...) It's a Christmas tree! Not a Christmas smurf!!! I don't care what the back panel on the book says...

This was a great assortment of holiday and winter time Smurfs stories by their legendary Belgian creator, Peyo. But why was that ogre story thrown in? I would have been with just those 5 other stories alone in order to make this a more cohesive collection. The only reason I can figure out for addition of the ogre oddity is that this book is about 55 pages long. Without the 8 pages of 'The Ogre and the Smurfs ', this 2013 offering from Papercutz would barely clock in at 47 pages. I have the paperback edition which at $5.99 is a steal. But I bet the smaller page count just wouldn't have been feasible for Papercutz', hardcover edition.Lots of seasonal fun with a small detour in the middle. Sure to delight generations of Smurfs fans.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

The Smurfs Olympic Special (Family Comic Friday)

The Olympic games in Paris are less than 3 weeks away and I'm absolutely thrilled that Papercutz is celebrating with this Smurftastic special. Reprinting the story 'The Smurf Olympics' from 1979, the torch is passed to the next generation of Smurf fans with this one-shot floppy.

Hefty Smurf is unhappy with how lazy his fellow Smurfs are. In order to help get them into better shape, he proposes a series of games in which the winners get medals. Oh, and a kiss from Smurfette!

The village splits into 2 teams. Sadly, nobody wants fragile Weakling Smurf on their squad, so he becomes a team of one! 

This yarn becomes two stories at this point. Hefty is engulfed in a comedy of errors as he can't get any of his fellow Smurfs to act serious. Meanwhile Weakling Smurf is starring in his own version of the Tortoise and the Hare as he tries so very hard to train (in vain) for the forthcoming Smurf Olympics. Add in Brainy Smurf driving everyone crazy as the official referee of the competition and the wisdom of Poppa Smurf and you've got yourself about as perfect as a Smurf adventure as you can get without the presence of Gargamel and his cat Azrael!

I had debated on whether or not to pre-order a copy of this book from my favorite local comic shop. I'm trying to scale back my collection a bit. Plus I read about this book a week late because I was on vacation when the Previews for this special dropped. I figured if I tried to order it later, I probably wouldn't get my hands on a copy until AFTER the Olympics had passed. So I was content to miss out on a copy. Imagine my surprise when I went to my favorite store just yesterday and they had a couple of copies available on the shelves at the checkout. I figured this is kinda a holiday special and since they went to the trouble of ordering this, I happily made it a part of my collection.

Now this isn't the story's first time in print. There's the original version in France which a year later was serialized in a couple European mags. Just a couple of years ago, Papercutz released the story as part of their Smurfs 3-in-1 anthology series in volume 4. There have also been countless adaptations of the story in the 40 years in-between publishing. I don't want to dissuade anyone from buying a comic book, especially if it's one I review for Family Comic Friday. However, as there isn't any new material in the Smurfs Olympic Special, if the young reader in your life already owns Smurfs 3-in-1, Volume 4 already, save your money. OR... buy a copy for another deserving young reader who might be thinking about getting into comics. 

Lastly, for those of you parents and guardians who like me heard the myth growing up that the Smurfs are demonic. There's no magic in this story. Except for a couple exploding tricks from Jokey Smurf, this isn't even a violent tale. From what I can tell, it was the Jehovah's Witnesses who declared the Smurfs to be Satanic. As with every family friendly book I review, I leave it up to the parents to ultimately decide. However, if this book ends up being a hit in your home, check out the Smurfs official channel on Youtube where they've got the 1983 hour-long animated Smurf Olympic Special ready for viewing! It could be a lot of fun and cool way to beat the Summer heat as you prepare for the real games later this month!

Nostalgic with a heart-warming ending. A very liberal use of the word 'Smurf' as a substitute for other words that can get a little confusing and annoying. But something multiple generations of readers can enjoy!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.