What is this book about?

Bartman was a short-lived series that told various tales of Bart Simpson’s superhero alter-ego, Bartman.

Why should you read this book?

If you like the satire of the T.V. show The Simpsons and the sillyness that can often be found in comic books and comic culture; you might end up liking Bartman.

Not only was this series funny just from a comic nerd standpoint. It was also really funny for people who really like The Simpsons. I was worried that a lot of the humor might not carry across mediums, but surprisingly the book still remained pretty funny; even without seeing the animation or hearing the voices. As far as I understand it, Bartman, was published under Matt Groening’s publishing company, Bongo comics. Where he still publishes various stories under that company, such as The Simpsons, Futurama, and every now and then a Radioactive Man tale. So a lot of the writers from the show work on the books as well. Which was awesome because you can really see that in these stories when you read them.

The story I want to recommend to you is Bartman, Sisters are doin’ it for themselves, and The great purple hope; which were printed in issues #4, 5, and 6 of Bartman Volume: 1. These stories combine to form a three issue tale where Kent Brockman, a television news reporter for the local news in the town of Springfield starts an anti-Bartman editorial to boost viewership of his program, which ended up making the whole town crazy over wanting to kill Bartman.

Because the town turns on him, Bart gives us being Bartman, he lets himself go by binge drinking soda pop, and and fails to save his sidekick Milhouse and two sisters Lisa and Maggie from being captured by the villain, Canker.

I really like this series because it has all kinds of funny takes on goofy comic moments. Bart giving up on being Bartman because he feels he failed everyone, so they drew Bart walking away from Bartman like in this iconic cover where Peter Parker walks away from being Spiderman for a while. Kent Brockman playing the role of Spider-man’s arch nemesis, J.Jonah Jameson. They had Bartman binge drinking on soda just like when Tony Stark aka Iron Man gave up being Iron Man and started binge drinking on alcohol. They had his sidekick, Milhouse, try taking up the role of Bartman to try and clear Bartman’s name; just like when Robin would try to take over for Batman or various other sidekick’s try and take over for their predecessor’s.

Even other heroes coming in to try and take his place to pick up the slack; which is exactly what Lisa and Maggie (Bart’s sisters) did when they created the hero moniker’s: Lisa the Conjuror and The great Maggeena; very similar to what happens in comics when heroes such as Catwoman or Nightwing protect Gotham city for when Batman was away. And even to top it all off, Bart even created an alter ego for his pet dog, Santa’s little helper, and turned him into the cowled K-9, Bart Dog; which is exacty what Bruce Wayne/Batman did to his German Shepard, but giving him a mask and calling him, Ace the bat hound.

The jokes the creators make when poking fun at comics has always been one of my favorite things about The Simpson’s. And what better way to fully show the extent in which you can take those jokes than dedicating a whole line of comics for them?