…………….The Complete BoJeffries Saga – Alan Moore…………….

4 crampons out of 5

Alan Moore does big picture tongue-in-cheek (I’m thinking of his Image work here), literary-influenced comic fiction with his Lovecraft work, or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the positive and negative approaches to comic history with his classic Watchmen or the majority of the ABC line. But what else does Alan Moore do? Well he also does comedy. The silly side of Moore, which expressed itself more often in his early 2000 AD work, has more recently expressed itself in his Dodgem Logic zine, but this collection of the BoJeffries tales, which were published across several comic collections over the years, is my favorite version of the Moore wit, distilled into a short and sweet compendium of weirdo humor.

So the Bojeffries are a family of vampires and werewolves and weirdos living in London… probably Northampton, England. While the general joke of the series is the fish-out-of-water element, what Moore brings to the table – and what was hinted at with some of his more developed 2000 AD gags – is a sense of having thought these characters out to some kind of logical end. They may all be cast as different one-beat elements of the joke, but they are far from having catch phrases.

This is well exemplified by one of the few short tales that fills the collection, a ‘musical’ featuring all the recognizable characters from the “saga.” Moore’s cleverness with words makes this amusing enough, but it’s the weight of the realness that he gives even these ridiculous BoJeffries that really makes it readable. And re-readable – bits made me laugh out loud on repeated reads, whereas most funny books lose the thrill once you know the punchline.

Pricing on the book nowadays is bit steep, but if you find a collection and the price seems right, this is really an excellent addition to shade your Moore collection with a consistently hilarious look into his silly side. While it’d be nice to see this sort of unleashed nonsense more often, maybe it’s that much funnier in its short and sweet burst.