Comics Review: The Simpsons Comics #223

Spoilers Below:

“The Book of Jobs”

After Homer landed several random job offers, Marge implored him to pass on them in order to stay out of trouble. Instead, he became a job placement specialist, and started passing his offers along to other townspeople. This seemed to work alright initially, but eventually Springfield spiraled into chaos after numerous unqualified hires. Homer then had to step in and take over each job, ruining them all, but keeping his damage contained to a small scale.

Best Bits:

1) Homer’s dessert mash-up: “Ooh! They combined into one super-pastry. Like a Megazord made out of flour and sugar!”

2) The dumpster was labeled: “Humpty Dump Co.”

3) Ralph: “Thank you, FM Radio Man! You’re my hero!”

4) “VIVA MOE!”

5) The last panel, which featured parachuting koalas, Sideshow Bob, giant three-eyed fish, and Milhouse with robot legs.

I gotta hand it to the writer, this was definitely an interesting premise. In the show (and the comic as well), Homer always ends up getting unrealistically offered a wide variety of jobs, which always result in hilarious failure. “So,” some story-monkey probably asked, “what would happen if other townsfolk took them instead?”

Well, as we’d expect, even more chaos – considering most Springfieldians are just as dumb as Homer, give or take a bit. Which seems ripe for entertainment.

However, it wasn’t nearly as funny as one would imagine, for reasons a bit uncertain. I think what it comes down to is the dialogue wasn’t as outrageous as expected, with the story doing most of the work instead. For instance, it’s funny that Chief Wiggum would become a police snitch, but seeing it in practice only yielded a further description of the situation, instead of an exploitation of it. Or Comic Book Guy taking over Arnie Pie’s traffic copter gig, seeming like he wanted to carry out superhero duties, but instead intentionally causing more chaos. This was actually the worst of the poor placement jokes, because CBG had negative intentions he was actively putting into effect, as opposed to his stupidity inadvertently making things worse.

Sure, there were some good gags. I enjoyed that Homer, having taken a new job, brought his framed photo of Lenny along. I assume this is the same signed version that Homer spoke to in the “Homer’s Enemy” episode

The best joke of the issue was probably when the fourth wall was broken to suggest that “Bear Patrol III: Panda-Monium!” could be an actual comic book story, and later the note (“Seriously. It’s a story about ninja pandas. If you want to see it, write us! – Nathan.”) If you’re reading this, dude, I’d pay to see this

In the end, a few good laughs and a couple other small ones wasn’t enough to make this a comic to write home about, but it was still a decent showing, just about on par with Simpsons Comics #222.