It Ate Billy On Christmas (Family Comic Friday)

I created Family Comic Friday because I was growing frustrated with parents going to shops and getting horrible recommendations about what comic books were appropriate for younger readers. I guess when it comes to reviews like these, I should cover not just the age appropriate stuff but the bad stuff well. If that's the case, then today's book definitely fits the criteria of a read where the suggestion given to me was all wrong.

It Ate Billy On Christmas was originally recommended to me as a great Christmas graphic novel to add to my wish list. For a couple of years, I would search for it regularly when shopping online for holiday themed reads. Last month I finally found a copy and ordered it along with several other Christmas comics and graphic novels. 

I should have known something was up with the shape of the book. It's rectangular. However instead of the format of the book going vertical, this hardcover was horizontal. Now, there's been a few horizontally formatted graphic novels. Frank Miller's 300 comes immediately to mind. For a few issues, Grant Morrison's run on Uncanny X-Men was a horizontal comic. I think there's even been a Fantastic Four annual published in this this configuration. 

This book was published by Dark Horse, which is known for its nearly 50 years of comic book and graphic novel offerings. Plus, on the back cover, this book is categorized as a graphic novel! So it's not really a traditional graphic novel, I thought. Then I started thumbing through the book. With an illustration on every left page and a painted piece on the right, there's a lot of visuals. However, this is not a work of sequential art. It's a children's book! Or so I thought...

Since I had waited so long to find this book and I spent money on it, I decided I might as well read it. And since it was Thursday and I needed a book for my weekly Friday post, I decided to review it as a "Family Comic Friday' read. 

Lumi is a young girl who's bullied mercilessly by her older brother. Every year for Christmas, she asks her parents for a puppy. But considering how mean and violent brother Billy is, Lumi's parents refuse. This Christmas, the girl is thrilled to discover that Santa has gifted her a puppy. The ugliest, smelliest, weirdest looking puppy you ever could imagine.

The puppy in reality is an ancient creature that broke into Lima's home looking for a snack, which the creature finds in the form of Billy! Not willing to give up her new puppy kinda glad that Billy is gone, Lumi fools her parents with a cardboard cutout of Billy. Mom and Dad don't seem to mind as a fake Billy is much more pleasant than the real thing. But as more children begin to disappear, will the town discover the truth and Lumi's new puppy?

This is a deceptively demented book that I really enjoyed. The painted artwork by Steven Daily reminded me of the animated works of Time Burton. Roman Dirge's writing style was just brilliant. You think you're getting a sweet little holiday fairy tale but the work is peppered with sarcasm and satire like a Terry Pratchett novel. Then there's the additional non-sequitur hidden inside the author's commentary like that of Douglas Adams' from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. However, this is not a sweet little holiday story. 

It's a tale of terror wrapped up in pink Christmas paper with happy little elves and butterflies on the surface. Some parents will love the dark twists to this 2007 book. Others will despise it. I went to Amazon in order to find a recommendation of reader age and couldn't find any.  Obviously, the world's biggest book seller doesn't think that this is a children's book no matter what the guy who suggested this book to me years ago thought. 

If the creepy CGI family movie Coraline is appropriate your little ones, then you probably won't have any qualms about this book. Never seen Coraline? (You should. It's great!) Then try to base the appropriate nature of this book on eerie book series such as Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and RL Stine's Goosebumps.

Some eaten children, a pair of aloof parents and one swear word, this is definitely not your traditional holiday tale. But it's not really a graphic novel, children's book or work of fantasy horror for only the grownups either. What it was, was the perfect amount of gothic, surreal and darkly humorous misadventure for my taste in reads.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Turkey Day One-Shot

I closed my 2022 Thanksgiving comic book readings with this 2021 horror one-shot from Source Point Press.

A small town in Illinois is about to host its annual community theater Thanksgiving pageant. This year's organizer promises a huge surprise is in the works. Meanwhile, an alien invasion force has landed in a nearby field chock full of turkeys. Taking over the brains of the delicious fowl, the alien army waddles over to the theater house in order to make their first kill, though the theater goers think this is all staged as part of the big surprise. Truly, this will be a Thanksgiving Day to remember when everyone realizes that these guys aren't here to just 'talk turkey'.

I bought this book right after Thanksgiving last year. So I've been waiting just about a full year to enjoy this sci-fi black comedy. This book was grim, gory, irreverent, and fun as hell! I loved just about every moment of it; though the story did take a turn I wasn't expecting at all. And I thought that homage final page, which was just darn near perfect. 

I did briefly think that this book made a slightly wrong turn adding in a certain former POTUS in a cameo towards the end. Just seeing his face made me feel for a brief moment of 'here we go again' with some sort of political statement. But the use of this character for 1 panel was actually pretty funny and it added to the dark humor tone of the story. 

I'm going to let you dear readers in on a little secret: I am terrified of turkeys. They're mean. They're evil. They'd kill you if they had the chance. But over the past year, I've made friends with a turkey at a local farm. Though she has a different name, I've started to call this bird 'Swanson' after the turkey TV dinner. Over this time, I've come to realize, 'Swanson' is a salt & pepper hued turkey. All the turkeys in this comic and countless viewed videos of poultry on human violence have been perpetrated by brown feathered turkeys. Thus, I change my stance that only those brown feathered foul are direct ancestors of velociraptors! 

Being a comedy, did this book do anything to make me less afraid of turkeys? No, not really. In fact, when the alien leader plucks out a turkey's eye in order to take over its brain, I wasn't mortified like in previous books where other adorable animals are hurt or killed. If anything, I think the use of turkeys are things of holiday horror are a thing of brilliance and I would strongly recommend to SyFy channel getting the rights to this comic and turning it into next year's Thanksgiving movie ASAP! It's campy like Sharknado and bloody like The Evil Dead. I'm sure doing so would make this the next Turkey Day classic for generations of families to come!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Rick and Morty, Volume One

 

   When it comes to the subject matter of the graphic novel that I'm about to review, Rick and Morty, let me be very clear: I've never seen the show! In fact, if it wasn't for my receiving a copy of this book in a Comic Bento Box, I probably wouldn't have bought this volume.

      If we're confessing secrets here, I had been sitting on this book for a while and if it was for a recent episode of Comic Book Men which features the first issue, I probably would still be letting this book collect dust on my To-Read shelf. But the gang on the AMC show pique my interest, so I gave it a read.

    Rick and Morty is an animated series that airs on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. It's been described as a naughty and wicked version of Back to the Future. After reading this collection of the first six issues based on the Dan Harmon (Community) series, I would have to agree.

    Rick Sanchez is an inventor with a mysterious past. For the past 20 years or so, he feel off the face of the earth, literally. During his 'lost weekend', Rick manipulated and profited from misuse of the time-stream and the multiverse. The inventor has become such a menace that not only is he on public enemy #1 of various agencies that govern time travelling and intergalactic empires, but he's also the target of the infinite number of Rick Sanchez's of the multiverse in whom's names and reputations he has ruined.

    Laying low, Rick Sanchez returns to the present day where he lives with his daughter. But domestic life has very little thrill for Rick. So when adventure calls he recruits his grandson Morty to help him reek more havoc on the multiverse. Up first- playing the futures market for fun, profit, and maybe some mass destruction of a universe or two.

     This volume was crazy. I enjoyed it, though I've never seen the show. Has this made me want to turn on Adult Swim and binge watch it till the cows come home? More than likely no- though if I was flipping channels and I came across and episode, I would definitely give it a shot. 

     I'm also not likely to collect this series. But if I found further volumes for a decent price, I would buy them, not wait so long, and read them. But like I'm going to do with this volume, I will probably sell them to a used book store to get trade credit for something else I want as a permanent addition to my collection. 

     BTW- folks, this might look like an innocent cartoon comic. But Rick and Morty is one of the darkest cartoons out there. This is not for kids. With excessive violence, unedited language, and some mildly heavily sexual themes, this is a teens or older book for sure.

    Worth Consuming

    Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

"Obnoxio the Clown vs. X-Men, #1”

I’ve never heard of Obnoxio the Clown until now and I’m glad I did. He’s a very dirty clown, with little morals and an even shorter temper. He’s Krusty the Clown times a thousand!

n this one-shot from the 80s, it’s Kitty Pryde’s birthday and Professor X hires Obnoxio to perform at her party. Yet, Cerebro is convinced the clown is an evil mutant and well, hi-jinx ensues.

What’s even better are the Obnoxio shorts at the end of the book. Why this guy never took off, I’ll never know.

But I thought he was hilarious.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.