COMICS REVIEW: SIMPSONS ILLUSTRATED #3

Spoilers Below

HOMER’S RUN

Bart busts up a bunch of church statues causing two grand worth of damage ad as such everyone in the family has to cut back on expenses. Homer finds out that his relief is coming in the form of an early retirement offer from upper management while Bart gets to keep a new Falcon that the Captain is pretty much giving away! However, when the Power Plant employees are sent on their retirement, it certainly isn’t what they expected as they land on the land of “Garbagio”.

Almost like a Swiss Family Robinson from hell, their plane on the way back has been destroyed, and there isn’t enough food to go around to feed everyone. Eventually, Bart is able to call upon “Falco” and his flock of seagulls to fly across the waters and eat the island they are living on, thereby forcing Burns to send the Coast Guard to make sure everyone gets back safely. Back at the plant, Bart offers to give up his bird in exchange for everyone’s jobs plus $2000 which Burns does.

STINK & STINKABILITY

Bart refuses to take a bath and as such decides to go on a stink strike until he gets his TV watching privileges. However, after being embarrassed at school, Bart starts in on a new system where he will hose himself off every morning before he goes to school, and then roll around in the garbage when he gets home so he can stink for his parents.  However the tables get turned when Homer joins in on the stink strike, immediately causing Bart to take his bath.

THE AGONY AND THE ECTOPLASM

Bartman has to take down the bullies and gets help from not only Houseboy, but now the Salesman! Thankfully the super squad is successful in their defeat of the bullies. Unfortunately, the Salesman meets his untimely demise but is somehow able to come back to life as a Gil-ghost. You would think the Gil-ghost would be a great partner in crime, but the dude is really lost as he is pretty much fouling up every time Bart is on a caper. Houseboy is out with an ear infection too, so when Bartman and the Gil-ghost go up against Nelson,  they have to pull out all the ‘pops’, but the ghost ends up ‘seeing the light’ and leaves in the middle of the fight. Interestingly enough, it turns out neither Heaven nor Hell want anything to do with Gil and the ghost ends up reanimating its corpse and actually helps out Bartman in taking out local thug, Snake.

Overall, this was a great collection of stories at a great value. Homer’s Run had a bunch of laughs and I thought the story was well put together with a lot of twists and turns. I was surprised to see a story like Stink & Stinkability in this issue as the recent Bart Simpson issue was all about Bart taking a bath so it seemed kind of redundant. And yes, you gotta love Ol’ Gil who looked sadly like Casper, making me crack up every time he said something. Having said that, we had a healthy mix of stories altogether, and at a not so crazy price of $3.99, Simpsons Illustrated #3 is certainly worth a pick up.

(8.0 out of 1o)