3 out of 5

Derek Drymon carries this thing.

The first Spongebob Annual hits a bit closer to Nickelodeon home with its humor versus later entries’ more willingly out-there stuff.  The S-Bob randomness still translates well to the comic book medium, it just feels slightly restrained, mainly Rob Leighton’s contributions – a Wonderful Guy / Secret Man / Squidward bit drawn by Vince Deporter which might as well be an episode of the cartoon, and some fake ads for ‘Blek,’ done in the style of silver age comics’ doodad hawking by Mark Martin.  The latter is amusing, but it just never goes far enough with the parody to budge out of that “safe” zone.

The majority of the book focuses on the Aquatic Adventurers, whether in their old age – Drymon’s ‘Catered Affair’ squaring off Mr. Krabs against ‘Bob for all of the Adventurer signatures on a comic; Kolchaka’s short gag-strip Super Gary, about Mermaidman and Barnacle Boy in a retirement home – or the ‘classic’ version of the characters (again from Drymon) in ‘Sidekick Blues,’ in which Ramona Fradon gives a nice newspaper-comic vibe to a tale about a mind-controlling conch.  Chuck Dixon and Hilary Barta gives us an amusing origin yarn with ‘The Coming of Golden Kelp’ – expressive as always, thanks to Barta – before Drymon draws the book to a close with another Adventurers bit.

All the strips are worth a chuckle if not more, but it’s definitely primarily Drymon who “gets” the potential for elevating the humor, and begins to make inroads to evolving that aspect of the book.  He doesn’t always succeed, so there’s not really a breakout story here, but it set a fun “focus on the heroes” premise for future Swimtaculars.