Saved by the Bell Holiday Special

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you probably remember this live-action TV series. It's main star was blonde and brash Zach Morris and his adventures (or was it misadventures?) at Bayside High School. The show aired on NBC and spawned at least 2 spin-offs and numerous merchandising goodies. I don't think that many people thought the show would thrive as it did in syndication but it's been almost 25 since the show began and it still airs on various channels, including one of the MTV stations.

   Anyhow, items that were released during the run of the show did abound but they weren't huge sellers. As I said, Saved by the Bell more or less became a cult classic after it was finally cancelled. So, a book like the Harvey Comics publication is considered rare. But rare thus not always mean valuable. Plus condition matters too. This isn't in the most perfect of shape. I found this for only a dollar in a bargain bin. However, some Saved by the Bell comics have a value of anywhere from $20-$50 depending on the condition. But again, that's if you can find it.

    In this holiday special, we've got a couple of tales along with a fun and games page and a couple of pin-ups. In the first story, Zach is trying to win Kelly's heart again. So, he tries to recreate her hometown as it would be for the holidays. But troubles bound to happen when he mixes up St. Paul, Minnesota for St. Paul, Florida! Then, Principal Belding decides to impose a rule where no Bayside student can go to the Winter Dance if they do not bring up their grades by a single point. Enter businessman Zach to turn the students of Bayside into a tutoring racket to line his pockets.

    The quality of the stories weren't bad. They captured the essence of the characters quite well. The art, however, was abysmal. They didn't look anything like the actors who starred on the show. Well, Belding looked pretty good but for all I know, the artist was drawing 6 random people to star as Zach, Kelly, AC, Screech, Lisa, and Jessie.

It's not the worst comic I've read, but it is one of the worst drawn comics based on a licensed property of all-time.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.

NBC Saturday Morning Comics

This one-shot from the summer of 1991 was published by Harvey Comics in co-operation with NBC and Toys r Us to promote that season's new fall-lineup of cartoons and kid shows. For one time only, fans of Malcauley Culkin, Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, and Wayne Gretzky got to see their idols in comics form for the shows Wish Kid and Pro Stars. As a kid I was a huge Gretzky fan and I thought the sun rose and set on Bo Jackson. It's pretty much the only reason I got this comic. If I even get to meet Bo, I'm gonna surprise the heck out of him by having him autograph this instead of a ball or trading card.

  Along with the aforementioned stories, this comic included a Yogi Bear comic; something called 'Spacecats' and a short story involving the gang from Saved by the Bell. This comic also doubled as an activity book with some puzzles and a maze to solve. I highly doubt there are very many pristine issues of this comic in existence due to these activities and I was lucky to find one.

  The biggest problem with this comic is that every story ends with "To be continued" and would only be resolved when the reader saw the show on its premiere date in September. To my knowledge Pro Stars and Wish Kid, and probably Spacecats has never appeared on VHS or DVD. So, I don't think I'd ever find out how these tales were resolved. (I'm not losing sleep over it, but it bears mentioning.)

  The comic also featured a voting contest for readers to vote for their favorite series. I was actually interested in this aspect and did a search about this. However, I couldn't find any hits regarding the voting in my search results. So, I couldn't tell you who won or lost.

    The concept behind this comic was a clever ploy of marketing. I'm sure kids were delighted with this, even if they had to shell out a buck twenty-five for it. This time period is pretty much the end of both the Saturday morning cartoon on the big three networks as well as the end of Harvey Comics. From that historical aspect, this might be a book worth collecting or if you are a fan of any of the athletes or characters featured in this book. Ironically, the fan base that probably would be the most interested in this comic (and know the least of its existence) would be fans of the teen series Saved by the Bell. With the show riding a nostalgic high and a planned tele-pic about how the show was made in the works, SBTB stuff is very popular right now and extremely hard to come by.

rating: 6 out of 10 stars.