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Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #11
Review posted: 31 Oct 2005
Writer: Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Chris Bonham, Steve Ringgenberg
Artist: John Severin, Gene Colan, Mark Schultz (pencils) James Lloyd (pencils)
Artist: Bernie Wrightson, Angelo Torres
Matt Groening and Bill Morrison (covers)
Letters: John Costanza, Karen Bates
Ink: Al Williamson and Steve Steere Jr.
Colors: Joey Mason, Nathan Kane, Nathan Hamill,
Publisher: Bongo Comics
3.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by J. W. De Bolt Jr.
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This is the second comicbook published by Bongo Entertainment that
I have purchased. Last year at this time I bought the first:
Treehouse of Horror #10. At the small newspaper shop in the
National Press Building, I happened to see Alice Cooper on the cover
and he contributed a great story. So how do you top having
contributors to the annual Halloween comicbook such as Alice, Rob
Zombie, Pat Boone (hey, he did an album of heavy metal cover tunes)
and Gene Simmons? Well, how else? By getting experienced and
well-known horror comicbook creators on board.
When I saw Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, John Severin, Gene Colan, Bernie
Wrightson and Al Williamson all contributing to the same book, I had
Like the annual Halloween TV presentation, the comicbook takes the
Simpsons characters and plants them in pastiches and homages to
the staples of pop culture.
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to pick it up. Marv Wolfman (New Teen Titans) was instrumental in
launching Marvel Comics’s horror line of books in the early
1970s when the Comics Code Authority relaxed its censorship rules. He
created Blade the Vampire Slayer, (represented by Simpsons character
Carl in Marv’s contribution), and wrote Tomb of Dracula,
and the classic “Casper the Dead Baby” story in Crazy
magazine.
Gene Colan (Dr. Strange) began drawing horror comicbook
covers and interiors in 1954 with Adventures into Terror and
penciled every issue of Tomb of Dracula. Len Wein
(Giant-Size Marvel) and Bernie Wrightson (Frankenstein)
created the Swamp Thing and they get to spoof their own creation here;
Len Wein also wrote stories for Strange Tales and House of
Secrets and scads more. John Severin (Desperadoes: Quiet of the
Grave) has a long and distinguished career including many war
comicbooks, which serves him well on “Midget Commando,”
and Al Williamson (Creepy) is an EC Comics veteran, so, along with the
rest of the crew, this is an ideal way to meet last year’s
standard.
Like the annual Halloween TV presentation, the comicbook takes the
Simpsons characters and plants them in pastiches and homages to
the staples of pop culture. One half of the book comprises two
separate stories and the other a quartet with bookends and segueing
scenes. The Tomb of Dracula team of Wolfman and Colan took liberties
and made Montgomery Burns into Dracula and Smithers, of course, into
Renfield. Homer Harker and his team of Lisa Van Helsing, Bart Drake
and Carl LeBlade go after Dracula. It’s odd, at first, to see
the classic Gene Colan shading technique used in a Simpsons parody,
but it works well and even makes it all the funnier.
For the second story, the very creators of Swamp Thing, Wein and
Wrightson, get to blend their baby with the Simpsons in the tale of
“Squish Thing,” which has roughly the same story line as
the origin of Swamp Thing, substituting a Duff Beer/Lime Squishee
combination for swamp-stuff. This is, arguably, the best story in
Treehouse.
“Two Tickets to Heck” (with the “E” and
“C” in “Heck” designed like the EC Comics
logo) is an anthological story comprising “A Quick Way to a
Krusty Death,” “Bart Simpson: Midget Commando,”
“Shock! Suspense! Simpsons!” and “Blast from the
Future Past!”
Simpsons fans know about the numerous references that are fun to
pick out of each TV episode, and this book includes such, from the EC
Comics-style covers (it’s a flip-book, by the way), to nods to
2010, Reese’s commercials, The X-Files, and even character actor
Frank Nelson.
—CCdC— Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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