Muppet Comic Mondays: The Four Seasons - Winter

 The Muppets: The Four Seasons - Winter

written and illustrated by Roger Langridge

 

James Gannon - So, it's come to this...

The final issue of Roger Langridge's The Muppet Show Comic Book has been released, and a month shy of two years after it was due. The Winter issue, which was to be the first story in the arc under BOOM!, now completes the collection on a certain holiday the Muppets know all too well: Christmas. You just can't make Muppet anything and not eventually do a Christmas version of it. There have been special edition Muppet Christmas Palisades action figures. You can't punt a football and not hit Muppet Christmas something or other. So, it's about time they did it in comic book form.

Basically, it's a Christmas only the Muppets can have. The Chef tries to make a Figgy Pudding that goes horribly wrong, Gonzo tries to wrestle the Figgy Pudding which goes horribly wrong, Sam the Eagle reads "Twas the Night Before Christmas" that goes horribly wrong, and Pigs in Space is made of horribly wrong. Piggy wants to put up Mistletoe for obvious reasons, Kermit has to get her a gift, Rizzo eats Gonzo's trained yogurt, and a refrigerator gets busted. Yep! Roger Langridge and the Muppets. You know the drill by now. It's wacky, Muppety fun that Roger Langridge is so spectacular at delivering.

With that, the era of the Muppet Comic book has ended. From the promise of short 1-2 page comics in the completely defunct Disney Adventures magazine, to BOOM! Comics' dual running Muppet comic lines, to the disappointing near loss of the final story arc, to the year of the magazine reprints that were a boon for those who had no access to the original issues and a bane to those who managed to grab every single one. What's next for the Muppets in comic book for are for Disney and Marvel to decide. I would be ecstatic if we saw a Marvel produced Muppet comic series, but I'm fine if we don't. Of course, I could also say how lackluster this release was (not a fan of the stock of paper they used), but that's biting the hand that released it. Marvel could have just left the series unresolved.

If there's one thing I took away from these comics, it's that I wouldn't have discovered Langridge without them. Snarked just ended last month, his stint on Popeye is ongoing, but he retired from the Muppet Comics with this arc. It makes you wonder if that was one of the key factors in BOOM! ending the license or if it was the other way around. As I said last time, it almost seems he left things open ended in case someone else takes up the Muppet pen.

Well, now that's over, we just have to wait for whenever the heck those Ape published Sesame Street comics come out. And Archaia... please PLEASE PLEASE do another volume of Fraggle Rock.

The Muppet Mindset by Ryan Dosier, muppetmindset@gmail.com