Comic Review - Sesame Street #1

                Comics are for kids.  As much as some people try and tell you otherwise, comics are for kids.  Think about the heyday of comic books (before the speculator bubble burst in the 90’s), who was collecting comics at that time?  Primarily kids!  Comics didn’t pander to the children at that time either.  They just crafted good stories and entire universes that were relatively accessible to children.  A kid could go to the local grocery store or newsstand at the mall and pick up a random issue of a comic book, read it, and want to come back for more.  They didn’t have to read the previous four to five issues to get caught up on the story arc, they didn’t have to be fully immersed in the universe to understand what was going on, and they didn’t need to collect every title on the newsstand itself in order to get a complete tale.  Comics were good, they were accessible and they were successful.

                Nowadays, it seems like comic books have been divided into two different distinct formats.  All of the comics that we grew up with (the big-two superhero stuff for the most part) have grown up with us.  The stories are darker, more mature, and more inclusive than ever before.  This is fine as there is obviously a market for that.  The problem with that scenario though is that as those comics grew up, nothing with any real staying power grew in its place, to solidify a hold on the kid market.  There are a few comics here and there that do a good job, but many are by independent publishers and don’t necessarily get the coverage that those from the big two do.  Instead, we get comics that are marketed strictly for kids.  This is fine except that where old comics from the 80’s would tell their stories in a kid-friendly environment, many “Young Reader” or “All-Ages” comics nowadays seem to go with a simple, dumbed-down story, playing down to the audience instead of raising the bar and expecting the readers to meet it.  There are some exceptions to this as well, but as someone that has read a lot of “kid-friendly” comics in his search for something to ignite a passion for the medium in his own children; I think I can safely say that many comics geared toward kids are pretty bad.

                I decided to give it another go though, as Sesame Street #1 arrived today from Ape Entertainment.

Cover:

                First of all, there are six covers.  Six.  For a kid’s book.  I assume that they are all interlocking covers of the Sesame Street characters that form a large picture of the cast, but honestly the idea of standing in a comic shop, having to argue with my kid that the comic with Big Bird on it is the exact same thing as the comic with Cookie Monster on it is not something I want to think about.  Having to explain a marketing strategy that led to my favorite medium’s near demise to my son is not something that I really want to do at this point.  Maybe in a few years.

                Aside from the marketing ploy, if I was to base the cover on its own merits I would have to say that it does the job.  It’s a brightly colored cover that seems to not only get the physical aspects of the characters presented (on mine it was Big Bird, Telly Monster and Baby Bear) but also the personality.  Sure, we’re talking about puppets here, but if you grew up with Sesame Street (as I did) you know that everyone has a distinct “voice”.  The way they are drawn here by Amy Mebberson really plays on that.  You can see that she has referenced the source material for more than just style guides on how to draw the characters.  This is actually very consistent throughout the book itself from all of the artist and writers.  I can’t say too much more about it.  It doesn’t tell a story per se, but it’s a #1 issue and the main idea should be inviting children to look inside, which is just the case with this cover.

9/10 – If I was judging it on the marketing strategy it would be  much lower, but as a cover, great stuff.  Mebberson nails it.

Story:

                The book, much like an episode of Sesame Street, is broken up into multiple stories.  I could easily see this as an actual episode of the television series and it’s impressive in that it feels like a natural piece of the Sesame Street puzzle and not homage to the show.  There are multiple writers here, so I will give a brief rundown of their contributions.  Jason M. Burns handles three stories and they feel like the most “Sesame Street” of the stories involved, like they were transported straight out of the show itself (except for the initial “How to Read Comics” story, which is incredibly helpful for first-time readers.  Paul Morrissey writes a tale of Oscar the Grouch that deals more with imagination than it does with teaching, but that’s okay with me.  Comic books are about imagination and the writers use that to their advantage here as that is one of the driving forces of the show as well.  Patrick Storck writes a short Cookie Monster piece that I swear I have seen before on the actual show, okay maybe not the exact story, but something very close.  Then we have two stories from Jay Fosgitt.  They are each little one-pagers but they give a nice silly little respite from the larger stories and introduce characters (The Count, Snuffleupagus) that are not in the comic in any other story. 

                There is a great balance of characters here as well.  The “big” story (the one that would lead off the show) focuses on Elmo and Grover (as Super Grover) but after that they are not seen from again.  I have no idea how they decided on putting the comic together but this could have easily become an Elmo-centric comic based on his popularity and the ease in writing a “kid learning about the world around him” kind of story.  I am not an Elmo fan myself, and I know that I would be turned off by the book if it was just twenty-two pages of Elmo.  I hope this trend of variety continues as there is pretty much something for everyone here.  The writing definitely plays down to the young child element that is the target audience, but I have less of a problem with this than I would if the book was about superheroes or something along those lines.  The way it was written really does fall into line with the way the show “feels” and as I said before, it definitely feels like an extension and not just a cash grab.

8/10 – It does the job well, from telling young readers how to read a comic, to transporting them to Sesame Street itself, the writing is spot-on, and I dare you to read this without doing the voices in your head. 

Art:

                There’s a list of artists longer than the list of writers, and they each bring a bit of their own flair to each individual story.  Scott Ball illustrates the opening piece and does a decent job, though Elmo looks a bit creepy at times.  I realize on the show that the eyes are fixed in the middle, but it looks like Elmo was dropped on his head one too many times.  Amy Mebberson illustrates the “big” story and does an exceptional job capturing both the likeness of Elmo and Grover, as well as their personalities.  The way the characters act is on par with what we would expect had we sat down to watch the television series.  Scott Underwood on the Oscar the Grouch story and James Silvani on the Cookie Monster story do a decent job as well.  Fosgitt illustrates the stories that he wrote, and while his illustrations are a tad stylized, they are still instantly recognizable and ten times cuter than anything else in the book.  You can definitely see his style poking through ever so slightly.  The final story is illustrated in the claymation style of the Bert and Ernie’s Great Adventure portion of the program.  In a lot of ways, Sesame Street has gone downhill from where I remember it when I was growing up, but Bert and Ernie’s Great Adventure is one of the high points of the current iteration.  The fact that they were able to get the claymation for the comic (whether it’s traditional or done digitally I don’t know) adds to the feel that this is just another episode.

I'd say 'poor Elmo' but he had it coming.

The acting, the movement, Mebberson nails it all on this, probably my favorite panel of the whole book.

Fosgitt bringing his own, distinct style to one of my favorites, The Count!

The best part about the new episodes of the television show continues that tradition here. 

7/10 – A very good effort from all of the artists involved.  They stayed as true to the characters as the writers did and added to the quality of the book itself.

Overall:  8/10 – The fact that my four year old’s eyes lit up when I showed it to him told me everything I needed to know.  A phenomenal effort on a comic specifically designed for children, which I don’t feel bad reading to them.