Muppet Snow White #1 (of 4)
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Release Date: May 19, 2010
$2.99
Having just returned from the family vacation to Walt Disney World, my life has been taken over by the Mouse. Visions of the Disney Princesses have taken over the visions of my children. The sounds of It’s A Small World have permeated my brain. We are now Disney junkies looking for our next fix. Great timing, perhaps, that BOOM! Studios released it’s latest Muppet comic in the Fractured Fairytales vein: Muppet Snow White.
Although The BOOM! Muppet releases attract a younger crowd by nature, they’ve always been cleverly written to entertain mom and dad as well. Muppet Snow White #1 takes every opportunity to break down the fourth wall by using characters Gonzo and Rizzo as The Brothers Grimm to “narrate”, by way of bickering with eachother about whether Camilla the Chicken or Spamela Hamderson would make a better Snow White and procuring license deals for Snow White’s lovable companion, Pepe the King Prawn, who also happens to be Spamela’s agent.
The entire comic feels very much like a Muppet Show production, with all your favorite Muppet characters playing a role, and there are some inspired choices among the cast. With Kermit as the Prince and Spamela as Snow White, Miss Piggy gets plenty of chances to take out her “HIIIIYA!” karate rage as the Queen. I personally thought Fozzie’s wizecracks as the Mirror worked really well, but The Electric Mayhem as the Dwarves was my favorite, singing “Heigh-Hooo!” in the tune of The Ramone’s Blitzkreig Bop.
Gonzo and Rizzo take advantage of the fact that the comic follows the classic tale in the public domain rather than lampooning the Disney animated version which gives the book some additional jokes in the comparison, but is interesting in that the Muppets are now owned by Disney, and BOOM! has the Disney license.
And that brings me to the book’s fatal flaw. It’s a wordy book. Not only is there a lot of narration and dialog, but most of the humor would probaby fly above the normal school-ager. And for kids who don’t yet read, there are so many word balloons on each panel that the art, which has lots of color and great lines, suffers as a result. For adults, there’s such so much writing that it weighs down each page – it’s certainly not an easy page-turner.
Muppet Snow White would probably make a better television show or movie than what began with this issue. It still has nice art, most of the jokes hit rather than miss, and it has a great cast of characters in place, so I’m interested to see where it goes from here.