This is the third collection of Roger Langridge's excellent ongoing The Muppet Show Comic Book series for Boom! Kids, with a single-issue "Pigs in Space: The Movie" story with art by Shelli Paroline and a three-issue story with Langridge's art.I wrote about the first book in a monthly round-up, and was very impressed. I got to the second book for Book-A-Day # 80, and was even more thrilled then. My love for this series has perhaps plateaued -- I'm not going to keep claiming that I love each new volume more than the ones before it, since that would be just silly -- but it certainly has not diminished.
Langridge still has an excellent feel for the pace of a muppet routine, and his twenty-two-page comics equate very closely to a TV episode of the same number of minutes. He still captures the essence of the characters in his art and dialogue, while drawing the muppets just a touch manic and off-model, as if they're about to get up to something completely unlikely the minute you take your eyes off them. This time, the one-issue story has Fozzie and Gonzo pitching two movie moguls -- seen mostly in shadows, but with very familiar silhouettes and heckles -- on a "Pigs in Space" movie, interspersed with that actual story. And the rest of the book sees the muppets on a tour of the sticks while their theater is rebuilt after the shenanigans in the last book. (And, quirkily, Fozzie and Gonzo have somewhat limited roles in this story, as if they were "busy" filming the other issue!)
Langridges's comics are great fun for all muppet fans, both the kids that are ostensibly the audience this time around and those of us old enough to remember the '70s show that this comics version follows so closely and so well. And, once again, it remind me that I really should chase down some of Langridge's older comics -- if he's this good doing Henson and Oz and Goelz, how good is he when he's doing pure Langridge?
Book-A-Day 2010: The Epic Index
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