When I was a kid, I sat with a blank music notebook (I took piano lessons... back off), some colored pencils and a copy of the Justice League of America comic book I'd just read, and I wrote and drew my own comic book. It was about me and how I met the colorful heroes from the comic book right in my own neighborhood. If memory serves, I think it was even a project for school.
Somehow, Gail Simone has peered into the past, and not just into my childhood, I would suspect. This is a cute little story about innocence and imagination. Simone throws Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes fame) into the suburbia in the Marvel Universe, and the result is a good bit of fun.
Gus Beezer is a normal kid. He's got a large comic-book collection, a vivid imagination, an older sister who torments him, and a reluctance to wear nice clothes and visit with relatives. Still, Gus is a happy kid... until he's forced to go to a family reunion on the first day of the release of a movie featuring his favorite real-life hero: Spider-Man. Also, Gus enjoys drawing his own comic books, and they feature his own adventures as the masked hero known to the world as Marvel Kid (accompanied by his faithful sidekick, Marvel Dog).
Lethcoe's style is more than a little reminiscent of that of Mike (Herobear and the Kid Kunkel. Of course, that comes as no surprise, since Lethcoe's own book, Zoom's Academy, is published under the same banner as Kunkel's. There's also a strong Bill (Hobbes) Watterson influence to found in Lethcoe's work here. The colors really bring out the light, dreamy quality of the story as well.
I thought the "split-screen" approach to the stories -- separate stories running throughout the book, on the top and bottom of each page -- would have been irksome, as I've not been enamored of the device in the past. But it worked here, and quite effectively. I got the impression of more storytelling for my comic-book buck.
I was also pleased to discover that the three Gus Beezer one-shots weren't just rehashes of the same ideas and plotlines. One needn't buy all three -- there's no continuing storyline -- but if one opts to pick up all three, the reader needn't worry about redundancy.
Ultimately, those looking for the same sort of baudy humor and wit that Simone brought to Agent X should look elsewhere. She's flexing a different set of humorous muscles here. The best way to describe this book -- and the two companion comics also released this week -- is simple as "cute." It was a pleasure to discover such lighter fare amid a field of mainstream comics aiming for a more mature audience. Both adults and kids will dig on Gus Beezer.
