Comics Review: The Simpsons Comics #222

Spoilers Below:

“Now You Wiggum, Now You Don’t”

In an attempt to get out of a ticket for driving his car into the school gymnasium (and onto crossing guard Hans Moleman), Homer agreed to watch Ralph as a favor to Chief Wiggum. Ralph and his “new daddy” bonded almost instantly, drawing jealous feelings from Bart.

Meanwhile, Lisa lost the school hamster, and eventually found him in a secret basement room filled with dozens of other missing hamsters and their offspring. She became their queen, but a violent revolution soon broke out.

The two stories converged when the hamsters chased Lisa to the Father-Son picnic (which Homer attended with Ralph, and Bart attended with Barney) and Ralph lured them away while covered in caramel. Homer and Bart then reconciled their differences and everything went back to normal – save for a few passionate devotee hamsters that still pledged their allegiance to Lisa.

Best Bits:

1) Ms. Hoover, after Lisa took an oath to protect the school hamster: “For the last time, Lisa, there’s no oath! Just take Senor Nibbles!”

2) Knight Boat returns!

3) Krusty has some explaining to do: “As part of my community service work for accidentally burning down that mall, I’m pleased to host this exciting event!”

4) Barney on fatherhood: “Every day with this little one is a gift! Because he’s paying me.”

5) The “Katamari Damacy” line was a damn deep reference. Props.

With the last new issue of The Simpsons Comics (#221), I lamented the fact that the “Yellow is the New Black” story was a bit too reminiscent of the “Marge in Chains” Simpsons episode from season 4. This comic had a similar issue (no pun intended) but it was two-fold. The main plot reminded me of season 9’s “This Little Wiggy” and the side plot was a bit too similar to the “Genesis Tub” segment of “Treehouse of Horror VII.”

The differences? “Now You Wiggum, Now You Don’t” focused more on the relationship between Homer and Ralph, as opposed to just Ralph annoying Bart – although that happened as well. To the comic’s credit, this one had a nice moment at the end of it, in which Bart told Homer that he embarrasses him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want Homer to stop giving him attention. (Aw.)

However, Ralph’s lines in the comic paled in comparison to the ones in “This Little Wiggy.” Back then we got comments about evil leprechauns and hot dog smells, now we got…well, nothing memorable. In fact, Ralph getting covered in caramel wasn’t even as funny as Ralph getting covered in chocolate popsicle drippings in the old days. (And the line “Mmm…caramel Ralph was very uninspired.)

However, speaking of hot dogs (the segue is totally there), the idea of making a hot dog bun out of a big sausage is amazing and I haven’t a clue how nobody has thought of it until now. In another revelation, I just realized Bart does kind of look like Barney’s son, given the fact they always wear the same color shirt.

Lisa’s comic story dealt with her trying to flee from a mutiny, as opposed to being held captive by the little folks, but up until the finale, her role as reluctant leader was pretty similar. (And that Halloween Special was based on a Twilight Zone episode, so it makes the plot even more stale.)

In the end, most of the jokes were worthy of a chuckle, but not much more. When Krusty made his Human Yo-Yo crack and responded “Really? Nothing for that?!” he was trying to get a laugh out of a weak joke. This issue as a whole did the same thing.

As evidenced in the bullet points above, there were definitely a few good bits of dialogue and two amusing storylines, but overall the issue was just as mediocre as last week, and a little too frustrating.

But not as frustrating as the fact that my Spanish n-squiggle isn’t working for some reason whenever I tried to write “Senor.”