Spoilers Below

Bart Simpson: Big Shot! encompasses Bart Simpson numbers 47-52, as well as Summer Shindig #1. If you haven’t read them yet, they are a good read. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything new to warrant a buy if you already bought or read these.

“The Sound and the Flurry,” saw Bart trying to get his hands on a mint copy of Radioactive Man, and Comic Book Guy decides he would be nice and trade it to Bart for “a definitive glossary of comic book sound effects.” So, this leads Bart to start doing research, which ends up with him coming face to face with a thunderstorm. The end was something I didn’t see coming.

“Lisa Simpson in: The Dating Game,” is your typical guy asks girl out for revenge, except with Simpsons characters and flare. Lisa gets asked out to the Spring Dance by this guy, Langdon Alger. Bart catches on right away that Langdon is no good, and aims to break them up. Of course Lisa doesn’t believe him, and heads her to find out Langdon was going to go with his girl before. So, Lisa decides to go stag, and ends up playing sax for the band playing the dance.

“The Simpson Project,” shows what happens when Bart and Milhouse gets bored. They go to the local junkyard, and get a bunch of parts. They end up making what looks like a rocket. Professor Frink comes by, and gets giddy for science, and decides to help the children. Because of this, The FBI, CIA, Mr. Burns, Russian Intelligence, and the President all find out, and try to race everyone else to help. The project gets out of hand, Frink gets arrested, and the kids are back to spitting on cars.

“Children Off the Cob,” is a pretty funny, albeit basic retelling of Children of the Corn. Yeah,  the Stephen King story. Ethan All is a transfer student from Kansas, and is telling everyone about the wonders of corn based fuels. Then he gets all of the children to plant corn plants in every open area. A baseball outfielder gets shooed away, Homer almost gets cooked in a vat of creamed corn, and Bart and Lisa get Willy to mow down all the corn, breaking the spell over the children.

“The Last Day of Summer Vacation,” is Bart’s way to maximize the fun of the day before school starts. This was the filler of the book, because there was nothing of substance, just stuff he could end up doing on a Saturday. If you want a real good read, just read “Bart Simpson’s Guide to Life,” instead.

“12 Angry Kids,” puts Nelson on trial for stealing Skinner’s war medals. Wait, his mother actually let him go to war?! Anyway, with Bart’s help, Lisa goes on her crusade to give Nelson a fair trial, convincing the group to change their votes. Hell, even the bullies feel bad for him, and have a breakthrough any shrink would be proud of. Spoiler: Nelson did it.

“Homer Simpson: Chick Magnet,” is a quick tale of how Bart uses a rolled up comic to give every female the misconception that Homer is a Hollywood big shot. He’s so oblivious, that he thinks it’s the bag of doughnuts. This reminds me of someone I go to school with. Well, the story could have been funnier, but they kinda just dropped it with Homer eating more doughnuts. This story was also not impressive.

Tell me if you heard this one before. Something happens to a character to make him think he’s dead, or invisible, and everyone falsely confirms it by ignoring him? Yeah, reminds me of an episode of South Park too. That is the story of “Bart’s Invisible.” Bart goes into Prof. Frink’s lab looking for work, so he can go see the new McBain movie. He then breaks the invisibility machine. Bart leaves, and while he is going home, he runs into Lisa and the Flanders kids. They ignore him, because Bart is a terror to them. His mom couldn’t hear him right away because she had the vacuum running, but acknowledged him right after he was out the door. He loots the Kwik-E-Mart, crashes the movie theatre, and screws with Comic Book Guy’s store. He comes home, and he realizes he may not have been invisible. Lo and behold, everyone he screwed with is right outside his door.

In “Drive-In, Driven Out,” Bart tries to go see a PG-13 rated movie. When the ticket person tells him he isn’t old enough, and to scram, he goes home, dejected. There, his grandfather gives him the idea of showing movies outside, with the help of his 16mm movies. How can this go wrong? Well, let’s start with Lisa putting out health food for snacks. Next, all of the movies were 50’s hygiene videos. This was also a very meh story.

And finally, we have “Big Top Flop.” The class gets to go on a field trip to Springfield’s Cirque du Soleil clone. When Bart realizes that this circus blows, him and a few friends decide to ditch, steal a bus, and go to the real circus. What do we learn from here on out? Never let Bart try to sneak you guys into anything. After five different fails at getting in, they decide to hoof it back to the other circus, where Otto believes it was magic when he woke up, and saw the bus at a different circus.

All in all, this is the same exact stories you would read in the monthly issues. The filler stories were terrible, but all in all, these stories were pretty cool to read.

Overall, I give this a

7/10.