5 out of 5

Pages and Pages of LAFFS, my friend.

I generally don’t dig straight gag books.  The lack of any kind of ongoing plotlines – however loose – starts to make one question, after a bit, why you’re plunking down several bucks a week for something that we can now experience through webcomics fer free all day every day.  This belittles the efforts of gag books and suggests that yuks are yuks, but: yes, unless there is something extra, art-wise or creativity-wise, that’s the bar set when you’re not relying on cliffhangers and characters to rope us in.  That requirement means that there are exceptions, though for me, they’ve been few.  Namely Angry Youth Comix.  And now: Munchkin.  In both cases, there is a very, very loose sense of continuity, or rather the creators – Tom Siddell and Jim Zub playing around in Steve Jackson’s / John Kovalic’s jokey RPG world of treasure-lovin’ monster-hatin’ Munchkins – have set things up such that the loose continuity is part of the world, and it prevents the book, even in its 2-3 stories-per-issue format, from every feeling like it’s just a formulaic Saturday morning strip, a.k.a the webcomic.  Zub tends to lean heavy on dumb puns in his section, so it’s good he has the bouncy Ian Rian Sygh on his side illustrating his gags; Siddell, meanwhile is a genius at smart dumb zany humor, jokes zipping around with Looney Tunes slapstick glee while shocking you with a sharp quip or meta observation that truly illicits onea’ them horrid LOLs and I’ll never type that again I promise.  His gags are then heightened even more by Mike Holmes’ expressive, perfectly timed art.  In other words: gags are only part of the formula.  Visual pacing and excitement must be in place, and Munchkin has secured itself the perfect artists to nail this quality.  Boom!’s high quality printing and bright color productions seal the deal.

I strayed from the book at first because Jim Zub doesn’t sell me and Boom! Box seems, mostly, for kids.  A funny cover grabbed my attention, though, and a flip-through had me eyebrow-raisin’, with a full-on reading leading to them laffs.  I picked up the issues I missed and wasn’t disappointed by a single one.  Yes: must love dumb humor.  But if by dumb humor you think classic cartoons instead of, I dunno, Spongebob (which has its place, but is a different beast), you might be equally as pleased as m’self to discover how funny this book is.