2 out of 5

Just as the Gumball comic needs its Frank Gibson or Tyson Hesse, Munchkin absolutely needs Tom Siddell.

Let me tell you something about parody: you can take the premise of something and add your own humor to it, as Tom did with his movie spoofs in the last set of Munchkin issues, or you can take the premise of something and just add your characters into it, otherwise not adding much of anything, like Sam Sykes does in his woeful Harry Potter take in issue 11.  One of these variations requires creativity, the other one is… dumb humor.  (Hint: The smart one is the first one.)  (It’s like adding “in bed” to the end of fortune cookies.  Worth a chuckle, but doesn’t require much effort and you get the joke pretty quickly.)

Sykes other contributions are better, but it seems like everyone – Sykes included – latches on to the ducks-are-horrible concept from the Munchkin world, because yes, that’s funny, but it makes the strips feel rather tired, and why Siddell’s humor – which seems inspired by Munchkin but not just using its in-built gags – stands supreme.  And then the main feature in issue 12 is a laboriously anti-climactic strip from Will Hindmarch which really just wants to be interesting by having you turn the book sideways to read it.

Siddell only appears in 2 out of the 8 stories here.  That’s a 25% success rate, folks.  To be clear: the rest ain’t bad, but it’s better when it’s propped up by Tom’s work.  So when he’s gone (issues 11 and 12), the series is not propped up and… not worth buying.  Thus, I pray Siddell returns.  (I mean, I’m okay not spending the money, but I like ma laffs at the same time.)