Bob’s Burgers takes a multi-faceted crack at the world of comics.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mike Olsen, Jeff Drake, Rachel Hastings, Justin Hook
Art: Brad Rader, Tony Gennaro, Frank Forte, Bernard Derriman
What they say:
Take a look at Bob’s Burgers from a whole new angle with weird tales from the Burgerverse!
Content: (Note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers.):
Comic Book spinoffs are a dime a dozen these days, almost a requirement as part of the new age of transmedia storytelling. If you can play it or watch it, and it has even a modicum of notoriety, then you can probably read the comic book version of it as well. I’m generally not a guy who goes in for spinoffs. I prefer to simply enjoy the meaty source material and then move on to another flavor. But man, for the name Bob’s Burgers, I can take a shot.
If you’re not familiar with the smartly-written eponymous show, it follows the exploits of Bob, proprietor of Bob’s Burgers, and his family: Wife Linda and three kids, Tina, Gene and Louise as they struggle to keep their grease trap of a restaurant from closing down and getting into plenty of traditional sitcom shenanigans along the way.
The comic follows the same premise, but in the form of multiple short stories throughout the issue, each following a different member of the family, as well as utilizing multiple authors and art styles throughout.
Overall the book is faithful to the tone of the show, and generally the art neatly recreates the look of the original animation, but unfortunately the most important aspect, the writing, fails to live up to the quality humor of its source material.
This is perhaps indicative of the structure of the issue. The short story approach feels disjointed, presenting a series of asides to the world of Bob’s Burgers, and in the end feels somewhat dissatisfying for it. It’s also strange to me that they chose to focus on the kids for the first issue, leaving Bob and Linda out in the cold, aside from about a page each.
Conceptually, most of the stories are pretty clever, ranging from Tina’s erotic horse “friend fiction,” to Gene getting permanently stuck in his burger costume. The execution of these ideas, however, is short and fairly boring, and makes me wish the show had taken a crack at them as opposed to the comic. They got the puns right, they got the characters right, but mostly this feels like supplemental material, and not a Bob’s Burgers tale in its own right.
In Summary:
For the most part, this issue feels a little gimmicky. Diehard Bob’s Burgers fans may get more out of it, but for everyone else its an amusing but far from laugh out loud affair.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: August 27th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
