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| Simpsons Comics #245, their last issue |
The first comic book I've ever read was labelled Bongo Comics. It was the italian edition of Simpson Comics #100, a celebratory issue with the comics equivalent of a tv series' "clip show". It was 2004, I was 8 and I was a big Simpsons fan. Everytime there was an episode on TV, I was there to watch it. And as every big 8-years-old fan of something, I was constantly craving for new content of it (to tell you the truth, now I'm 23 and I didn't change a bit, as you can see with my Lupin The Third-mania) and that's why discovering that issue of Simpsons Comics in a supermarket was simply huge. Not only it meant a costant flow of new content about my all-time TV family, but also the possibility of going through it anytime anywhere. It still is one of the reason I love comics (and books in general) today. It had the potential to be the beginning of a great love story between me and Bongo Comics, but at the time I didn't have any comic book shop near me and Simpsons Comics never appeared in that supermarket again.
When I first started buying comic books in english, 8 years had passed but still one of the firsts series I wanted to start buying was Simpsons Comics. But growing and starting to realize the big drop in quality the Simpsons TV series was having, I stopped craving for new Simpsons stories outside of the Golden Age of the show and simply decided that their comics weren't worth of the small monthly budget of a teenager. Even if I was still in love with Futurama's new seasons, I was starting to lose any interest for everything that was Matt Groening's related, especially if characters with yellow skin were involved.
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| Chart by Sol Harris |
Reading Matt Groening announcement for Bapper Books, I realized I didn't know anything about Bongo Comics. I've been wanting to read their stuff since childhood, but I didn't even know if they were any good (having loved the #100 as a child wasn't a reliable opinion) and who was writing and drawing them. I started digging through internet looking for every bit of info I could find and was slightly disappointed: yes, on Wikipedia and on the Simpsons Wikia you can find every information you want about them, but what's really hard to find is anyone talking about these comics. There are some threads in old forums here and there, but for the most part I was unable to find articles about these comics, their history and/or recommandations on the best issues. Fortunately I've come across this article called Bye Bongo with a brief but incredibly interesting history of the company told through various quotes by the people who worked at Bongo Comics and I fell in love with their approach to comic books.
Bongo Comics' history is a contagious story of love for comic books. In a time where everyone in mainstream comics was writing and drawing dark superheroes stories trying to be the next Alan Moore/Frank Miller, they started putting out funny comic books made by long-time fans of the comic book medium. And in an time where every comic book publishing house has to sell the rights of his comics to Hollywood and TV as its main aim, they kept doing comics for comics' sake*. In the past week, I've been reading every Bongo comics I could (both in digital and on paper) and, even at their worst, they always have a heart. Going through their stuff you can feel the excitement of reading comic books, of waiting for the "New Comic Book Day" every week and discovering new stories with the characters you love. Even for a guy like me who doesn't live in the US and never experienced any of that stuff in his childhood.
It's true, maybe even their best stories don't get near the perfection of the Golden Age of The Simpsons Show (and that's also true for their Futurama comic book series), but they're still able to give you that vibe that only a good Simpsons story can give. Back when the show was really good, they were the perfect companion to it. They didn't feel like a surrogate, they had their distinctive flavor and style but they still were the real Simpsons. And when the show started to go completely downhill, with its characters losing their essence, its plots becoming dumber and dumber and the art-style and animation starting to lack any soul; the Simpsons Comics didn't stop to be the real Simpsons, replacing the show for some of the fans. They even succeeded in drawing Springfield with a modern art-style that doesn't look as boring and ugly as the modern art-style of the show is.
In my opinion, every kind of comics contributes to what makes this medium great. I don't think that Art in comics is only found in the kind of stories that people nowadays refer to as "Graphic Novels" (a term which is used to define content but in reality it only defines the format). When they're good and they're made with love for the medium, even mainstream and/or light-hearted comics can be defined "Art". Maybe not everything that Bongo produced is worth the time and maybe their stuff is not everyone's cup of tea, but for what I've been able to see they have produced a lot of good stuff with a good heart in it. And I think that, as a person who writes about comics, it should be my duty (and my pleasure) to find the good stuff they've produced and report them for everyone who might be interested in the future like I was interested when I started. Basically, I want to fill the void I've found one week ago when I started looking for advice and reviews on the Simpsons Comics and I didn't find anything. I'm not going to explore only the Simpsons Comics series, but everything Bongo produced in these 25 years, from Futurama Comics to Spongebob Comics and Jimbo. It's going to be a long journey and I haven't yet decided the shape the journal of it will take on this blog, but my main aim will be to write down what I think of these comics and which are the best while also maybe keeping you updated on my collection (yes, I want to start a Bongo Comics collection, but I don't really know how this will play out because I don't live in the US and therefore it can be pretty expensive to buy a physical copy of these comics). I'm going to call the articles related to this matter "Bongo Extravaganza" as an homage to the title of their first Simpson Comics trade paperback. So, if you're reading this 100 years in the future, there may be already out some of these articles and you can find them all under this label.
Next week there will be 2019's San Diego Comic-Con with Matt Groening's first conference for Bapper Books and we'll may have a glimpse of what this new company will be about (beside publishing Disenchantment comic books, which has been already confirmed). We don't know the future, we only know that it's coming really fast. That's why we should save what's worth saving of the near past before it's long forgotten. Even if they are "just" comics.
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| The beginning of my Bongo Comics collection! |
*Don't get me wrong: I'm not the kind of guy who thinks that american comics have lost their heart and everything that has been published in the last 20 years is garbage. I love modern american comics and I think that right now there are a lot of great writers and artists doing great work, both in the Big Two (DC and Marvel) and in the indie market. But, by getting bigger and bigger, these these companies have lost some of their magic.
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