Welcome to the Bongo Comics Box!
I may have only been reading real comics, so to speak, for a year and a half now. But almost 30 years ago, when my Simpsons obsession was in full force, I was collecting Simpsons Comics religiously. My dad would take me to the comic book store on a monthly basis for years, and among the dozens of shelves and boxes of X-Men, Superman, Avengers, Spider-Man, Batman, and Wonder Wonder, I gravitated ONLY toward the Bongo Comics titles. Everything else was invisible to me.
I bailed on the comics shortly after the Simpsons TV show started getting really, intolerably shitty, circa 2002 or so, because the comics happened to start getting shitty around the same time as well. The first eight years are where it’s at, son. That being said, I’m going to try my damnedest to make it through everything. EVERYTHING! The wheat. The chaff. All of it.
I’m excited! This is going to be fabulously nostalgic. Most likely not for you, though! But this isn’t your blog, loser!
Bongo Nostalgia Corner
I bought Simpsons Comics and Stories along with Simpsons Comics #1, making them my sixth and seventh Bongo Comics to be added to my burgeoning collection. I was eight years old at the time. I remember feeling like I owned something important. A collector’s item that was going to become increasingly rare as the years went on. And maybe that’s true, but my copy isn’t preserved in a plastic sleeve and the many, many read-throughs have rendered the issue horribly ratty. And possibly stained with ketchup, much like Bart’s shirt in the second story!
This particular issue always felt outside the main line of Simpsons Comics to me, and technically it is, but even symbolically. It was its own contained artifact. I don’t think I’ve read it in over 20 years, but I guarantee that each and every panel will come flooding back to me like so many horrible tsunamis that destroy entire villages in over a dozen countries! But let’s not get macabre here.
Here we go!
Simpsons Comics and Stories [January, 1993]
”Lo, There Shall Come… a Bartman!!”
Written by: Steve Vance
Simpsons Comics and Stories was a one-shot comic book born out of Simpsons Illustrated, a VERY short-lived magazine which only had 10 issues in two years. Needless to say, the various comic series were vastly more popular. At the time, no one on the magazine’s staff thought this was going to continue. They were fucking wrong. Excuse my fucking language.
The first story out of three was titled “Lo, There Shall Come… a Bartman!!”, telling the origin story of Bart’s barely-alter ego. We begin with the spiky-haired one reading an issue of Radioactive Man, Issue #456 – “By My Sidekick Betrayed!”
“Fallout Boy– Help!” yells Radioactive Man himself, squirming on the ground, “This particle beam is draining my superpowers!”
“Sorry, Chump! I’m Dr. Crab’s pal now!” Fallout Boy sneers with his new evil crustacean pal. I’m laughing already! Are you laughing already?! I’m laughing already!
Kent Brockman is on the living room TV yammering about a comic book convention coming to Springfield! Perhaps one might have very valuable items within their own collections that they could sell for bookoo bucks.
“Featured at the convention will be Arnold Leach, the man responsible for the Radioactive Man comic book. On Sunday he’ll be receiving the coveted ‘Good Guy’ Award in recognition of his achievements in raising the public’s perception of this lowbrow entertainment medium,” Brockman drawls while Bart listens with rapt attention.
Kids in 1993 loved Flip Wilson too!
After Marge “I have cookies!” Simpson informs the two male members of her awful family that they are already planning on heading over Grampa’s shitty nursing home, they both SLAP THEIR FOREHEADS IN FRUSTRATION! AYE CARUMBA! D’OH!
So at Grampa’s they are! And he’s regaling them all with a splendid little rant about having the same opponent in both the mah-jongg tournament and the Parcheesi tournament, which sounds like Hell on Earth to me. Relatable character, that Abe Simpson. A real voice of his generation. He was probably born in 1910, isn’t that nutso cuckoo?
Bart notices a comic book flopped over Grampa’s dresser. Radioactive Man, Issue #27! “Radioactive Man’s last battle with Dr. Crab– before Dr. Crab mutated,” Bart gapes.
“Where’d you get this, Grampa?”
“My new neighbor gave it to me. He’s got a pile of that crap– he won’t shut up about it.”
Oh Grampa, you card you. Why does he have this particular issue in his dorm room, or hovel, or whatever you call a nursing home permanent motel room? It’s because there’s a published letter of complaint he wrote back in, I don’t know, the FDR administration.
Grampa’s new neighbor, Morton Mankiewicz, enters the room. Marge encourages this old stranger to allow her only son into his place so he can show him his, ahem… “collection”. In my line of work that means paraphernalia, and you all know what my line of work is, don’t ya? *wink*
And, verily, Mr. Manischewitz has a giant collection of comic books in his closet. Stacks and stacks of old, unprotected issues of various series. You know the ones. Squid Man. The Superior Squadron. Plasmo the Mystic. All your favorites.
Wow! It’s just like Stan Lee, just without all the various sexual harrassment allegations.
Why does this guy have a bunch of comic books? Because he wrote a bunch of comic books! He’s a goddamn NERD, son. Feast your eyes.
On the way home the family discusses a topic that we, the reading audience, weren’t privy to: Morty “The Man” “Manfred” Mann is broke and degenerate and needs to sell the whole comic book collection off so he can pay his bills and buy a Ron Popeil Pocket Fisherman and whatever else old people spent their money on in the early ‘90s. It’s too bad, too. What a shame.
Kent Brockman gives updates about the first day of Springfield’s Comic Convention. Bart and Milhouse listen with rapt attention as Arnold Leach, the current chief editor of the Radioactive Man run. Sales are down, so he announces the release of a giant-size issue that will shake things up! First of all, they’re going to kill off Radioactive Man! Sales will skyrocket! Second of all, that’s it!
Bart and Milhouse are stunned and bojangled! “It’s an epic!” explains a smiling Leach, “From Chapter 1, ‘If a Foe Doth Slay Me!’ to Chapter 8, ‘The Reading of…the Will!’ Kids will love it.”
Kids will NOT love it. Bart is wide awake in the middle of the night ruminating on the ramifications of a dead Radioactive Man. I, Tom, have only had a little over a year of comic book reading experience, but don’t superheroes die and come back to life all the time? Superman died about 600 times, right? “I still can’t believe it. They’re murdering my hero!” Bart thinks, eyes the size of dinner plates, “Years from now, this is probably the moment I’ll be telling my parole board about.”
Pfft. I guess there’s no sleeping now. Bart flicks on the lights and indulges in a tried-and-true issue of Radioactive Man.
This is probably how Trump slept in the White House, except with a big, sloppy hamburger in lieu of a cigar.
Bart is inspired. Radioactive Man just broke into this king dude’s penthouse apartment and roughed him up until he promised to stop criming! Hmmm, maybe the likes of a 10-year-old boy can do some of the same kind of roughing up…if you catch my drift…
I know! Throw a Molotov cocktail through his living room window!
Or, better yet, become a superhero himself! That sounds a little less dangerous.
“If there’s one thing I learned from comic books, it’s that criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. To strike terror into their hearts, maybe all you need is a disguise. A creature of the night– dark– terrible.”
Superman’s mom had to make him his costume. Bart made his costume all by himself! There’s a good lad.
Bart immediately tries to ape Radioactive Man’s actions from the issue: staking out the roof, jumping on the balcony of King Man’s apartment, and letting himself in. Bart is less than graceful: he stakes out the roof of a hotel, flops onto the balcony of the hotel room (landing on his face) and then struggles to open the locked door. Well, that’s that! Time to give up!
COMIC CONVENTION DAY TWO! Kent Brockman is on the scene reporting the GROIN-TINGLING ANNOUNCEMENT of Arnold Leach’s “Good Guy Award” ceremony. “We interrupt the Super Bowl to bring you this special live coverage of the Springfield Comic Convention.”
Backstage, Leach is going over his award acceptance speech. Bartman isn’t having any of it.
In a considerably large, wide, and deep plothole, Bartman has discovered that Arnold Leach stole the idea of Radioactive Man from Morty Mann. Which is interesting, because Leach used to be Mann’s boss and, if I’m not mistaken, superhero creations are the intellectual property of the comic book publisher or, in most cases, the publisher’s parent company. Did I get that right? Hello? Anyone? Morty Mann emerges.
“And all this time I thought you were dead,” Leach smiles smugly, puffing on his cigar.
“I might as well be, for all you care” Mann calmly responds. He’s wearing a bowtie. I imagine his voice is similar to Garrison Keillor but without the ugly, Sorkin-y face to match. “I gave you Radioactive Man – the foundation of your whole company – and you tossed me aside! You fired me off my own strip!”
I can even take away his radioactivity! I’ll make him work at a grocery store.
Yeah, it’s called business, Morty? Boffo Comics owns the character? You signed the contracts? The company can do anything they want? What part of all this is lost on you, 66-year-old man? Boffo has the right to stick vegetables up his ass if they want to. They can make him drink Draino and slam his dick in a car door. They can give him COVID and slime him on Nickelodeon. And fuck you, sir, Leach is gonna kill the bastard.
“It’s been swell, Morty,” says Leach as he prepares to take the stage, “but I guess it’s time to face those moronic little fanboy geeks.”
Well, here’s ONE moronic little fanboy geek who just pulled a fast one on ya. Bartman used his Spymaster Jr. tape recorder (purchased from the back of a comic book) to record the whole conversation! So do you want to get a Good Guy Award or do you want to get slimed on Nickelodeon? Ha! Or do you want to get your career fucked? Up the butt. With vegetables.
So Leach approaches the dais. The fans are watching him. Brockman’s got his cameras on him. A bead of sweat drips down Leach’s fivehead. Bartman is like “grr”. Morty is like “hrmph”.
“I’m touched by the outpouring of support for our beloved atomic avenger,” Leach says after a lengthy description of the praise and accolades he’s received ahead of the “Death of Radioactiveman” giant-size, “so I’m pleased to announce a special new limited series, to be called… “The Return of Radioactive Man!”
And that old dude Morty Mann’s gonna write it! Yay! Radioactive Man is going to eat plenty of fruit pies and rant about his Watergate opinions!
“It will be followed by the reappearance of Radioactive Man’s own continuing series– re-numbered starting with all-new issue number 1!” Leach yells, throwing his hands up in the air.
Oh wow, what a completely unfathomable idea! Keep your most popular comic book character from being dead forever and you’ll keep your fans! That’s probably even better than your original idea, Leach. I wonder.
Later, Bart and Lisa read a giant stack of comic books in front of the TV. “Arnold Leach showed the world what good guys are really made of… and gave a certain radioactive hero’s tragic tale a happy ending… leaving this reporter with just one unanswered question… WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?”
Oh, the kid whose purple cape conformed perfectly with every spike on his head? I guess we’ll never know!
Thanks for forcibly pulling my 70-year-old ass out of retirement, you little pisser.
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