Comics Review: The Simpsons Illustrated #19

Spoilers Below:

“The Simpsons Comics Internationale”

Issue #19 of The Simpsons Illustrated features six different stories, the first of which stars Jake, a Bongo Comics intern, who connects the tales with the premise of digging through Matt Groening’s extensive international comic collection. He pops in between each segment.

“Too Crazy Juvenille Prankster: Bartomu!”

In the first story, a black-and-white Japanese manga spoof, Bart is a baseball player along with Milhouse, Ralph, and a few other kids. He is eventually challenged in battle by Yoshiberra, and defeated, but a Lisa character appears at the end for revenge.

“Les Schtroumphsons”

In this Belgian comic parody, Homer was tasked with selling waffles door-to-door for Señor Burns. He almost lost his job after numerous porch collapses, but was later revealed to not be at fault, and his job was saved with some help from Jean-Claude Van Damme.

“Los Simpsons in Pardon My Border”

A Mexican Simpsons family had to deal with Homer losing his job at the pencil factory by moving across the border. Homer was forced to disguise himself as a female student cheerleader in order to pass through the checkpoint successfully.

“Bartmanga! Featuring Robartman!”

A manga version of Professor Frink made a manga version of Bartman, who had to spring into action when a giant version of Bumblebee Man attacked the city.

“Cooking with Kang and Kodos”

The aliens attempted to cook a meal themselves.

Best Bits:

1) One of the baseball stadium ads was for Sorny, the knock-off electronics brand first seen in season 7’s “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield.”

2) “D’eau!” was a waterful pun. (I slay myself…)

3) A sign in the monkey-run pencil factory read: “Don’t be a damn dirty ape – wash your hands!”

4) Look at magna Frink with a Hayao Miyazaki reference: “Sweet Ghibli!”

5) Manfred Mon = Manfred Mann, and I love the reference.

6) All hail the return of the Chocobots (of the Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour from season 10’s “30 Minutes over Tokyo)!

Usually when covering Simpsons comics, I break down each of the segments, rate them individually, and then come up with an average score. This one is a different situation.

All the stories contained in Issue #19 are very similar – not necessarily in their plots, but in their general premises. They are all parodies of different types of comics, and the differences in each real life version are exploited in the content. That’s where the laughs are supposed to come from, and thus the usual witty dialogue takes a backseat.

So instead of seeing the signature Simpsons humor in the writing, it instead reflects the style of actual Japanese, Belgian, etc. comics. And of course the animation mimics the true versions as well.

As odd as it feels not to break this down further, the success of Issue #19 really comes down to one thing: do you read, enjoy, or have a decent amount of knowledge about foreign comics?

If you do, you’ll probably love this issue.

If you don’t, like me, you’ll be disappointed – or worse, be left scratching your head.