Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "rocky-and-bullwinkle"

Rocky & Bullwinkle: Classic Adventures by Al Kilgore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book collects the first twelve issues of Bullwinkle and Rocky Comics from Gold Key, published between 1962 and 1976. I picked this book up on a digital sale, not sure what I'd get. Media adaptation comics of this era are somewhat dodgy. Many Looney Tunes comics are far duller than the TV series and many gold key Star Trek comics were written by people who didn't appear to have ever watched the show.

This is something entirely different. This captures Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman, and Fractured Fairy Tales perfectly. The art looks just the same and the humor is just the same. The book captures the wordplay and goofy situations perfectly. This is like having extra episodes of the TV show. The only thing you really miss is that you don't get the long serials, but given that Gold Key would go years between issues, that's probably just as well. The covers are also very fun and vibrant.

One potential issue with these books is in the Dudley Do-Right strips, there are a couple of odd moments such as Dudley appearing on TV or testing out a modern airplane in policing that seem to forget Dudley Do-Right was set at the turn of the Century, but that could also be the writers ignoring that in order to do their gag and I could totally see the writers of Rocky and Bullwinkle doing that.

What is definitely an issue is that IDW reprints these as Gold Key printed them. In issue 12, Gold Key reprinted three stories from Issue 1. This was understandable from Gold Key's perspective because Issues 1 and 12 were 14 years apart, however it's far more typical for an archivist not to reprint material they've already reprinted elsewhere. It would have been better had IDW reprinted the original stories in Issue 12 along with Issue 13 rather than reprinting three stories twice in the same book.

I'd knock half a star off for that, but that still makes this a 4.5 star book. If you loved Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid, you'll love this book. Make no moostake about that.



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