5 out of 5

“No other troll in the land hangs with a doomsday baby!  That puts me atop the freaky food chain!”

While ‘Bodie Troll’ veers exclusively into poop jokes for the two-part story that comprises issues 3 and 4 of this mini, Jay P. Fosgitt’s inventive little creation never ceased to amaze me with how animated each and every page and panel were, or how fresh and funny the dialogue was.  All ages titles – I’m looking at you, Boom! – tend to kowtow to their audience a bit by copping modern hip kid speak or referencing the newest thing, but ‘Bodie’ is just pure Golden Age zany.  Looney Tunes is timeless because it existed in its own world, and when you look at some cartoons that have stood the test of time (at least in my mind), that openness – which is actually a willingness to go full on insular, keeping the logic and workings of the world all internal – is a shared trait.  But it’s a super rare thing to be able to replicate properly in comics.  Perhaps the closest thing still going would be Archie, but Archie was an anachronism by design (okay, maybe not by design, but certainly as time went on…), and thus works because it’s forever one winky, virginal step outside of our reality.

A letter writer in one of the issues mentions Asterix, and that’s probably a closer approximation of Fosgitt’s style: while the slapstick and timing (the perfect timing) are certainly inspired by classic cartoons, the level of detail – just the amount of things going on – is much more European.  While his figures and landscapes maintain a goofy, exacerbated style, occasionally Jay will whip out something like the storm cloud in issue 4, which has that Jordan Crane or Dave Cooper focus.  It’s a glorious thing, and something Fosgitt uses sparingly so that the style is always balanced.  And of course, for all of the examples of gloriously rich panels, there are those moments where Jay knows to drop backgrounds or color and just give us a static backdrop to keep the page flowing correctly.  To the colors (Jay Jacot is credited with ‘flats’ on the book – otherwise it’s all Jay P., but I’m not sure what flats would cover), Red 5 provides very clean production given that you stay within bright or Earth tones… which is fortunate for Bodie, since we’re dealing mostly with browns and oranges and greens.  The colors absolutely complement the art in every fashion, and again, setting it apart from most kids books, Jay doesn’t stick us with flat colors, using line shadows and nice blends to add depth.

What else can we praise?  The lettering?  Sure.  Jay uses what looks like a customized font that reads as hand-drawn… but god damn if it doesn’t sit perfectly with the very ‘alive’ pulse of the book.  The words breathe; you can hear our characters speaking (or shouting), and though it’s an all-caps font, artist / letterer combos have the fortune of knowing exactly where their words should go to work with the art.  (Unless ‘flats’ has something to do with lettering, in which case… good job, Jay Jacot!)

Our tales here stick clearly to humorous foibles.  No need for morals to get all stuffy about things, and I used the quote above to illustrate just how off the rails Jay can get.  It’s fascinating how his core idea – a troll who can’t scare anyone because he’s too cute – can provide so much hi-jinks fodder, and how setting it in the small town of Hagadorn doesn’t at all feel like it limits the possibilities of the stories.

There’s a lot of smart kid comedy out there today, moreso on TV than comics, maybe, but it exists nonetheless.  The ‘awareness’ in a lot of these examples, though, can be a bit tiring, and a Turtles fan for life though I may be, I admittedly might roll my eyes a bit when Mikey says ‘bro’ one too many times in an episode.  ‘Bodie Troll’ is proof that you can do classic cartoon comedy in the modern age without feeling like a stretch… with it instead feeling like one of the freshest things you’ve read in years.  And, y’know, Jay even manages to approach those excessive poop jokes in a fun way that’ll have you smiling despite your hoity-toity no-poop-joke rules.