From Friendly Ghosts To Gamma Rays, No.121: Turkey Day Comics!!!!!
Happy Pre-Turkey Day and welcome to a special edition of From Friendly Ghosts To Gamma Rays! It dawned on me the other day that we have comics for Halloween and Christmas, but not too many for Thanksgiving. However this year, two all-ages comics popped up that have Thanksgiving themes, and so as a treat ahead for you to nab for Thursday, I thought I’d write about them here!
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Batman Li’L Gotham #2
Publisher: DC Comics
Written By: Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs
Art By: Dustin Nguyen
Bathman Li’L Gotham rocks. Its first issue was a Halloween theme and its second is a Thanksgiving theme!
In this issue, Batman and Robin are watching the parade at home on TV, amused at the giant balloons the Bruce Wayne Foundation have bought and donated to the parade. Their joy is short as the Penguin shows up with an army of penguins to overthrow the parade. Quickly, Batman and Robin show up to stop this disruption, as well as finish out the holiday in style.
On the writing side the story is fun, all-ages, and a classic A-to-B Batman tale. The real gem with this series is Dustin Nguyen’s art, as DC allowed him to do it in water color with the characters in a slightly SD-style rendered on the page with fun and class. Nguyen’s grade-A art on this is an amazement to look at, and folks should pick up the title to give it a look, even if they are not traditionally Batman fans.
Batman Li’L Gotham is out now digital only from DC Comics (and will be collected in print later on).
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Monster Vol.4: Monster Turkey
Publisher: Papercutz
Story and Art: Lewis Trondheim
Monster is a great little series from Europe by the award-winning Lewis Trondheim. Now you may be saying, “Hey, Europeans don’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” in which you would be 100% correct. However, that doesn’t stop the world of marketing from having this title take aim at a Thanksgiving tie-in. Normally I would brush it off, however, being it’s the solid cartoon work of Trondheim, I couldn’t help but jump into this!
In “Monster Turkey,” Petey and Jean take their monster come-to-life, Kriss, on a road trip to the farm with Mom and Dad, to spend a little vacation. However, things are not what they seem on the farm. Everything seems to be missing, and before we know it, all the animals from rabbits to pigs, have turned into giant monsters, led by a giant monster Turkey. The family with the help of their own monster Kriss, must not only save themselves, but solve the mystery of what’s going on, packed with laughs along the way.
Monster is just a fun series by Trondheim, always enjoyable and laugh out loud funny to read. His simplistic style with just narration boxes from the POV of the children is always a joy to read; the humor is solid and entertaining for anyone, any age. Sure, since it’s not exactly about Thanksgiving it’s a stretch to put into the Thanksgiving category, but a giant monster Turkey, what else do you need in a book around this time of year?
Monster Vol.4 is available in print from Papercutz.
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That’s all for this round, catch us on our normal schedule this Friday!
Drew McCabe
drew@comicattack.net
