Back in February, Mark blogged about the forthcoming Melvin Monster anthology from Drawn and Quarterly, with much anticipation. I've just gotten a copy at the direct from the Drawn and Quarterly folks at the Word on the Street event in Toronto and read it in one gulp. What a hoot!
Melvin Monster was the creation of John Stanley, one of the principal writers on Little Lulu, Nancy and Sluggo, and others. Melvin is firmly in the Addams Family/St Trinnian's vein, a macabre and sweet kids' comic about a monster-boy whose parents (Baddy, a Frankenstein's monster, and Mummy, a mummy) urge him to do a bad deed every day, make him play with the family's vicious pet alligator, and demand that he follow in the family tradition of dropping out of school in kindergarten.
There's plenty of two-edged humor in Melvin Monster, stuff that parents will appreciate that might go over the heads of kids who are enjoying the slapstick. The art is fantastic, in a Marc Davis/Haunted Mansion vein, and the reproduced pages have been cleaned up just enough to make them neat without being sterile, some of the newsprint texture remaining in the scans.
Seth's book design, with wonderful tessellated Melvin endpapers and an embossed cover, make for a great package, perfect for a gift or for long-term love on your shelves.
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Great for a gift to kids.I would get some of the copies to gift my little friends !
To get an idea about the strip, see http://magiccarpetburn.blogspot.com/2008/09/melvin-monster.html
Nam Doubters
It may be nitpicky, but why do they get another artist to do the art (not the art design, which Seth did a great job on) for the cover? If I drew an entire book of comics, I would want my actual art on the cover and not someone else's!
The first volume of Stanley's "Nancy" comics is also now available from Drawn and Quarterly, and it's another beautiful volume with terrific contents. The issues reprinted are Dell 162-66 - due to an error that will be corrected, the reprint information in the book itself is wrong.
Just have to pick this nit.... Marge created Little Lulu, not Stanley.
Reminds me a bit of James Kochalka's "American Elf."