I grew up with Sesame Street and the Muppets, but just when I thought I had to give up those Muppets for the acceptance of my second grade peers, I was blessed with the opportunity to watch the Muppets on prime time television, back when that was a phrase in common usage.
As a side note, I find Jim Henson and all his creations fascinating. I own the first season of the Muppet Show on DVD, and I love being able to witness how the show evolved and changed. That type of evolution is true of a lot of shows, but it's even more evident with the Muppets because one gets to witness character development, voice changes, and the growth of a personal vision from a small-ish enterprise on Sesame Street to its current home, a Disney cornerstone. Sesame Street and the Sesame Workshop are world renowned. And it all started with one little puppet and five minutes on TV. Pretty cool.
Anyhow, that really is a digression. I’m just feeling a little bit inspired, which is good, because I had to re-write this entire review because the computer farted out its brain. Let's look at the comic.
Why did I choose this one? Why wouldn’t I, when you look at my history? In fact, what’s taken me so long? It's come up before, it's even been purchased FOR me, under the expectation that I would be excited to read it.
Even so, my expectations were low. I do love my Muppets, I just wasn’t sure how it would translate into book form. But I just gave myself a little Wikipedia crash course on all things Jim Henson related and now that I think about it, why wouldn’t this work? Jim revolutionized puppetry, especially in relation to television. Comic books, at least many of them, draw a lot of imagery from cinema. Now, this isn’t the type of “cinema” where we need four frames for a close-up, but the original show was shot for TV – and the Muppets themselves were made specifically for TV. They were designed to be manipulated by people off screen, making functionality just as much part of their design as were aesthetic concerns. The softer look of them wasn't just a choice for appearance sake, it was because it made them more accessible and capable of expressing emotion. It’s all perfect for drawing.
The comic follows the show's old Vaudevillian format, or at least, it sticks pretty close to it. There's lots of acts, and a smattering of behind-the-scenes gags. I’m glad I pulled out my DVD collection and watched a few episodes before reading this, because it was cool to see that they used all the same characters while sticking with the same structure throughout--after all, the structure that the Muppet Show eventually perfected gives a huge leg up to anybody doing a comic based off of the characters. They pretty much perfected the way all of these characters are going to work. It would've been a silly choice to ignore that, not because it wouldn't have been "the REAL Muppets", but because the show had already gone to the trouble of hammering out the best storytelling structure. (The show eventually found it, and from there, they just hammered them out of the park, over and over again.)
If you haven't worked on stage and film, you wouldn't know this - but things that work on stage don't work for film. It's something that was realized a while back for straight (non puppet) acting. It took a while for the world of dance to learn the difference between choreography for stage and choreography for the eye of the camera. Although I've studied both of those, and not studied puppetry, I'm sure the same thing applies. The kind of puppets one would go see in puppet theatre - marionettes particularly, probably translate horribly to film. (Which might be why you don't see them on television.) After Henson mastered his style of television based puppetry in short form, he took the old stage form variety show and learned how to make puppetry that could fill an entire show. Variety shows like Benny Hill and Laugh-In probably paved the way, but for my money, the Muppets perfected it. You can imagine why I'd be apprehensive about this whole thing working in an entirely new media. But all the work has been done to make the format, and the characters, work. A cartoonist just needs to mimic the camera's eye.
There are other elements that I wasn't sure would work. For instance, the content of the quintessential Muppet Show Format - the Vaudevillian/Variety show meets modern day sitcom. (I’m glad I pulled out my DVD collection and watched a few episodes before reading this. It’s cool to see that they used all the same characters, and all the same “acts” throughout). But it does work. In fact, the way they intersperse the “story” with the other bits such as The Swedish Chef, At The Dance and Pigs In Space, is similar to the format I’ve enjoyed in my favorite comics. (Yes, I have favorites now.) It’s not a situation of too many subplots like some, nor is it a situation of 23 pages that encompasses five minutes of a story. The old Muppet Show format turns out to be the perfect format for comics.
And know what else? The jokes work! I mean, they did on the show, of course. On the show, sometimes the set-ups were hugely obvious – but that was excused because a.) it was seen as being “for kids” and b.) that’s that old Vaudeville style. But off the page? Maybe it’s time for me to formally compliment the artist because that’s truly why and how the jokes work. Many Muppet show jokes were often sight gags, physical comedy and out and out slapstick, and I'll bet that’s not as easy to draw as one might think. The renderings of facial expression, the timing of all the comedic elements has to be drawn just right. The little "bit" from Wayne and Wanda, is a great example. Their "numbers" always consists of something physical happening – the guy being upstaged by the girl, set pieces falling down or in this case a slowly sinking ship. Here, it’s handled expertly. In one page and a few frames the joke is set up, and the punchline is achieved by the close. On the show, there was music and singing, and although this is (obviously) missing from the book, we still read the words that are being sung which actually engages us a bit more in some of the subtle cleverness that could go by too fast on the show.
I really enjoyed reading this comic. But I would have preferred this to be a done-in-one. That, to my mind, would be true to the form of the show. I mean, I know this is comic books and the nature of them is to have an ongoing story, but the story introduced here seems like it's going to be very long. I say that because this whole issue, in the plot related parts, was a set up of this story. And I “got it” within a couple of pages – Kermit’s not himself, Amimal’s not himself, Ninja Rogers came out of nowhere, and the mice/rats are digging for a treasure in the studio. But on and on it went without anything really happening. It seems a little disjointed from the rest of the package of this comic which is all about timing and keeping things tight in a “show biz” way.
But honestly, although that’s my criticism, it doesn’t really get in my way of the enjoyment of this. I think it’s clever, well-done, well-handled and expertly drawn. I’ll be interested to see if the next issue moves the plot along a little faster. I imagine if all the Muppet Shows were done-in-ones it wouldn’t be necessary to write anything original – one would just have to draw all the shows. And what’s really the point of that? So, I’ll keep an open mind and see what happens in the next issue.
Yeah, I said it. I’m gonna read the next issue.
-Nina Stone, 2009
Excellent review as always, Nina! I haven't read this yet for the simple reason I haven't found it to purchase yet. You addressed some of my fears, though - the structure especially. I'm also very curious to see how the pacing holds up. I'm like you, I love the Muppets, too! I don't have anywhere near your appreciation for how things are done for screen versus stage, but I'm happy the Muppets were successfully transfered to the comic format!
In conclusion, I have two words for you - Asterios Polyp? ^_^
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.08.04 at 16:41
Asterios Polyp is a-coming!
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.08.04 at 17:19
This is actually Langridge's fifth issue of Muppet Show comics. Earlier this year there were four issues which were just called "The Muppet Show", and all of those were done-in-ones. Each one had a self-contained story focusing on one character, with lots of "routines" breaking it up as you saw here. If you liked this, there's no reason to expect that you wouldn't like those. So you should see if you can find them.
Posted by: Mory Buckman | 2009.08.04 at 18:25
No problem, Nina! I'm just anxious to read your review because I enjoy hearing your opinion a lot.
Finding that first Muppet Show miniseries has become the bane of my existence. I'm starting to think it doesn't actually exist, it's just some running joke people have.
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.08.05 at 09:13