BONGO COMICS REVIEW: BART SIMPSON #70

With a little help – okay, more than a little help from Lisa – Homer is on the road to a promotion at the nuclear power plant. Then, Marge and Lisa need to save Bart from himself – and his sugar addiction. Plus, Sergio Aragones lets loose in another installment of ‘Maggie’s Crib.’

Spoilers Below

THE BLACK TOOTH

Bart’s candy eating obsession is getting way out of hand. Almost like hard drugs he spends all his money on it and soon it starts to become a health hazard when his teeth start to rot out of his skull. Before long, the Black Tooth shows its gross self to Bart as a punishment for the over consumption of the tasty yet sugary sweets, and as such he bolts out of the house swearing never to do it again before we are revealed of whom is  trying to ‘suck’ the life out of Bart.

GIRL POWER

What a better place for a 2nd grade class to go to for a field trip then the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant! While there, Lisa tries to get a head start on her class mates by going to her dad’s office to help clean it up. She does so much of a great job that Burns takes notice and offers Homer a promotion if he keeps it up. As a result, Homer opts to make Lisa his new intern where she comes in before and after school to help keep things nice and neat. Eventually, Lisa can’t take it much more as her school work begins to suffer so together with Bart she puts together a plan to get back at her dad once and for all. Its probably not too big of a stretch to imagine that Lisa quits her job and Homer goes back to being the disorganized oaf that’s been working at the plant for the better part of two and a half decades.

One of my favorite alcoholic beverages is called a “Black Tooth Grin” having been inspired by Dimebag Abbott formerly of Pantera, its a drink mix featuring Crown Royal, Whiskey, and a splash of Coca-Cola. Idk, why I mentioned that but that was the only thing that crossed my mind during the “Black Tooth” strip, which had more to do with a valuable lesson in eating too many sugary sweets in place of a balanced meal with fruits and vegetables. Its not very often the Bart Simpson comics usually take a positive moral head on as basis for a strip but I thought it was a nice change of pace of the usual Simpsons debauchery we normally get. I thought the ‘Girl Power’ story seemed a tad too formulaic with the typical “Lisa helps someone out but doesn’t get the credit for it but everything goes back to normal so it really doesn’t matter” story lines that we get far too often with Lisa led story lines. As a matter of fact, the last issue of Bart Simpson had a similar story featuring the Power Plant’s Basketball team. As a result, this issue deserves a “go to Barnes & Noble, read the first story, then put it back” type grade.

(7.0 out of 10)