Hey there sunshine. How was your week? Sufficiently rad? We hope that’s the case. James did the baseball, and Brandon bought a fan and a lot of books, and another bookcase. Because, you know, he’s got the problems. But hey, enough about things, let’s get to talking about this week’s BEST!

URCHINS>SNOWY

One of the two big comics announcements last week was MonkeyBrain Comics, a digital comics publishing company started by Chris Roberson and Allison Baker. The week also saw the first releases from the new publisher and, judging from the caliber of the first week’s releases, we can look forward to good things to come. Chief among the new releases was Bandette #1, from Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover.

Bandette is described as walking “a thin line between Tintin and Nancy Drew,” and it’s certainly apt. Intrepid adventurer. Roguish cast. Exciting and bright, Bandette #1 positively bleeds enthusiasm, but what’s so appealing is that it’s so unique, so hard to immediately classify. Bandette dresses like a superhero, but she’s a thief. But she also leverages her web of urchins and friends to do good things, too. We meet her when she’s burgling an evil arms dealer but she’s also talking to his puppy - who she is planning on stealing. It’s a hilarious mixture of genres and elements.

It works, dangit! It works because of the incredible skills of Tobin and Coover, who tie everything together with whimsy and flair. This is where the comparison to works like Tintin becomes so apt. Hergé was not just a skilled cartoonist, but one who blended elements of pulp action-adventure, espionage, science fiction, folklore and slapstick. With Bandette, its creators are doing something similar, and the result is a comic that feels modern and nostalgic, that’s gorgeous and engaging, that’s unlike almost anything else being published. Check it out, because I’m awarding it this week’s Captain Haddock Award for Silliness. (J)

GIRL, IMMA DO SCIENCE AT YOU

Sometimes you need to dig up a corpse to do something good. Or, you know, something less bad?

The current arc in Amazing Spider-Man features the return of the Lizard… who coincidence of coincidences, happens to appear in the Amazing Spider-Man movie in theatres right now! Anyway, much like all of Slott’s stories, this one builds upon what has gone before, but not in a way that confuses. In a previous story, the Lizard’s alter ego, Curt Conners, was destroyed when the Lizard ate his son. Which is a bad thing. Since then, the Lizard has been having a bit of a run as a creature of pure instinct… and Spider-Man wants to stop that once and for all, and revert the creature back to Curt. Using a bit of science and a vampire, he manages to “cure” Curt… but little does he realize that Curt truly is gone, and the Lizard has run of the man’s body. Anyway, things get quite hinky here, and ends with… well, ends with something pretty crazy. Something unforseen. And it’s wonderful. For most of his run, Slott has never failed to surprise, crafting situations that seem impossible, and solutions that seem perfectly understandable and plausible… despite how crazy the circumstances surrounding them are. It makes for some pretty fantastic reads, and this past issue is no exception. Which is why we’re handing this book the Science is a Verb Now Award. Well deserved and such. (B)

It’s time to play the music! It’s time to light the etc! Because it’s time for a new comic series about The Muppets!

With Disney taking over the Muppets comic license, Boom! Studios‘ series based around Jim Henson‘s creations came to a close last year amidst worries that the studio’s independent-minded skill for adaptation would be lost inside such a large corporation like Disney. Luckily, with The Muppets #1, Disney and Marvel have done a great job at capturing both the spirit of Roger Langridge‘s original Boom! series and of the original Muppets Show itself.

Of course, the big reason for this is that it’s basically Langridge doing the same thing he did at Boom!, except for a different publisher. The editing team deserves credit for letting him make such a wild issue, without worry that it doesn’t necessarily serve as a direct follow-up to the movie from last year.

Instead, Langridge has made an issue that is basically an episode of the in-universe Muppet Show, with short vignettes and a unifying behind-the-scenes theme of the whirlwind relationship between a 400lb gorilla and one of the Muppets. Snarked has shown that Langridge is great at longer-form serial comics storytelling, but with The Muppets #1, he’s showing off a different skill set: abject mastery of well-established characters and no fewer than five different stories. There’s Pigs in Space! There’s Kermit the news reporter (from Sesame Street) inadvertently reporting on a low-budget genocide - and then making a meta commentary about whether it was too far for family entertainment! There’s also a scene that could be construed as Gonzo… uh… “suggesting” that one of his friends date one of his girls/chickens, but let’s just leave the semi-horrifying parts of that in the back of our heads for a 2am freakout, why not.

Langridge doesn’t just understand the characters and world of The Muppets; he also understands what makes good all-ages entertainment. Langridge knows that kids can handle sophisticated storytelling and a certain level of “mature” content as long as it’s presented in the correct manner. I repeat: Kermit and the readers watch a sentient mattress alien murder and devour a species of newborns, but it’s all in the presentation. In some hands, this would be horrifying and rated M. In Langridge‘s, it’s like the Muppets of old and part of a great tradition of entertainment like Looney Tunes.

His greatest touch, however, might be resisting the urge to go “big budget” with the in-show-in-comic sketches he shows. In comics, you can do anything you draw, and in The Muppets #1, he shows all the sketches in glorious low-budget effects, just like they would be on The Muppet Show itself. An entire alien species is rendered in springs! The Pigs in Space crew turn themselves into plants and not at all by just putting on some leafy costumes. You can do anything in comics, and The Muppets #1 makes me smile. (J)

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