Yes, "mud"...

Gabby, the talking monkey sidekick of Jack Cole's Spirit clone Midnight, takes on the Nazis with whatever weapon is on hand in the story "War Over Iceland!" from 1942's Smash Comics #32.

Here's a panel from the very same story: You know, I'm a fairly well-read guy. I graduated from a private, college prep high school, and went on to minor in history at a good college. I also have two rather loquacious grandfathers who served on the frontlines of the European theater during World War II.

And yet, if it weren't for comic books, I would never have had any idea how deeply weird World War II actually was...

One good children's book deserves another

Last summer I talked at some length about a children’s picture book with an unbeatable premise, Monkey With A Tool Belt, by Chris Monroe, a very gifted artist with a skinny, slightly shaky line whose drawings are a perfect balance between child-like and professional.

Well, Monroe has a sequel to Monkey With a Tool Belt, entitled Monkey With a Tool Belt and the Noisy Problem (Carolrohda Books).

In this installment Monroe doesn’t restate the brilliant premise in the straightforward, elegant manner she did in the first book (That is, ““Here is Chico Bon Bon. He is a monkey. Chico is a monkey with a tool belt”). Instead, the story simply opens with Chico Bon Bon in bed, being awoken by a loud noise, written as “AROOGA BOOM CLANG CLANG.”

Chico, who is an extremely helpful monkey and not anywhere near as mischievous and malicious as the picture that probably arises in your imagination when you hear the words “monkey with a tool belt,” leaps out of bed to solve the problem, revealing that he sleeps with his tool belt on over his pajamas.

He takes off his pajamas, and Monroe gives us another look at his tool belt and what it contains:
“He had every tool a monkey would ever need,” the narration tells us. What does a monkey need with a pug wrench or a buck wrench? I don’t know. It never comes up.

Thinking it’s the wind, he fixes his bedroom window and goes down to breakfast, but he still hears it 17 times, so then he begins to investigate his house for the source of the noise.

This means busting out such particular tools as his “hear-a-lot-tool” and “stair-staring tool,” but no luck. Then he imagines various explanations, which Monroe provides funny little drawings of (termites, talkative squirrels, etc.)

Finally he searches his entire house, which leads to a wonderful two-page spread that was waaaaaaaay to big for the scanner. Here are the two halves of it:

Would you believe Chico Bon Bon lives in that huge house all alone? I guess that’s the benefit of being so good with tools; you can build yourself as a big a house as you want.

When I finally become a millionaire, and it’s really only a matter of time since comics blogging is such a lucrative field, and I decide it’s time to stop renting and start living in an eccentric mansion, I think I’ll just take a copy of Monkey With a Tool Belt and the Noisy Problem to the architect, open it up to this page and say, “Make it just like this. Only with some trapdoors, and a secret passage behind a revolving bookcase.”

Chico finally discovers the source of the big noise about halfway through the book—there’s something noisy in his laundry chute.

It’s a pretty unusual problem, one few homeowners probably ever experience themselves. I won’t reveal it here, as the discovery is such a delightful surprise, but rest assured Chico is up for the challenge.

In a 12-panel, two page sequence—the only part of the book where it takes on the structure of comics—Chico makes his plans and calculations and, using his banana cannon, he takes care of the problem.

Like a lot of sequels, this one is weaker than the original in that the premise is no longer as original as it was, but it’s still a book about a monkey with a tool belt, and it’s kind of hard to imagine that ever getting old. Monroe is still a great drawer, and, in fact, here Chico seems rounder and cuter here than he did in the first book.

If you only read one new children’s book about a monkey with a tool belt this year, make it this one.

This Is Not A Graphic Novel: Monkey With a Tool Belt

There was a time when a monkey and/or monkeys were a guaranteed laugh, a time when, simply put, anything was funnier when a monkey was involved.

Well my friends, that time has passed. I’m not sure when it was exactly that the monkey jumped the shark, but I’m quite certain that they are no longer the acme of humor.

Now it’s bears. Or possibly hobos. Maybe both, depending on the particular situation. But those words seem to pack the humorous punch that the word “monkey” used to, when dropped into sentences.

As fond as I am of saying things like “Bears are the new monkeys, and hobos are the new bears,” monkeys can still be rather amusing. Particularly when they’re wearing the right accessories.

Behold:

Chris Monroe’s picture book Monkey With a Tool Belt (Carolrohda Books) has a pretty brilliant idea at its center, one that it perfectly communicates in its simple, four-word title. That combination of words sure does fire the imagine; I crack a smile, grow a little excited, and even feel a little bit afraid when I contemplate a monkey with a tool belt.

Monroe, a painter and cartoonist responsible for comic strip Violet Days, continues Monkey With a Tool Belt’s powerfully simple, declarative pitch with the first three pages, which read thusly:

“Here is Chico Bon Bon.

“He is a monkey.

“Chico is a monkey with a tool belt.”

The early portion of the story lets us know a little bit about Chico. We see the tree house he lives in, learn some of the tools in his tool belt, and watch as he uses them to build and fix things for all of his little animal friends. We learn that he’s very creative, and that he occasionally makes mistakes, which he is happy to fix (Mistakes like building a seesaw upside down, so that the kids riding it bump their heads on the ground. Hee hee).

Monroe’s prose in this section slides into rhyme and it’s not exactly good rhyme—“He builds a dock for the ducks and a clock for the clucks” —but her art is fantastic.

Her thin line is precise, but somewhat imperfect, with a touch of late Schulz-like scratchiness to it—it connects where it needs to connect, and the shapes it forms are all perfect in proportion, but they all have a very organic feel to them. Put simply, her drawings look like drawings; you can almost see the path her pen took on the page.

The art seems to have been filled in with water colors, giving it a further warm, home-made feel; the work of a great artist sharing workspace and materials with some little kids.

Her pages are packed with details, making it a real joy to linger on. One scene in a sequence about what Chico has built features our protagonist working on a toy box for Neville, a tiny Godzilla-like guy in a pair of polka dot swim trunks, and they toys are all fun and play-able looking—I even recognize some from my own youth, particularly one of the limbless old-school Fisher-Price Little People toys.

Near the climax, there’s a beautiful two-page spread featuring a bicycle ride between two points. The start and finish are right next to each other on the page, but the road between the is a long, winding, corkscrew one, on which multiple images of the character on the bike are drawn at different points to show his progress, and the result is something between a map and a picture. This is one of the few scenes that fill up all of the available space (most of the others are smaller pictures or panels embedded in airy, empty space), and Monroe fills it with trees, animals and buildings. There’s a hot dog stand called Frank’s which is shaped like a giant hot dog, a burger joint called Patty’s shaped like a giant hamburger, a house that inexplicably looks like a Jack O’ Lantern, a bear with a honey pot sitting in the woods by the road while bees the size of his head buzz around and just wow, what a spread!

I think the title pretty much tells the only story worth telling, but Chico does have a little adventure within these pages. One day he’s chilling in a lawn chair in his front yard, when he notices a banana split on a tiny table across the street. When Chico goes to investigate, he’s captured by an organ grinder, who puts him in a wooden box.

The organ grinder has lost his previous monkey, Bobo, as is described in this sequence of events:

Bindles, being he province of hobos are, of course, inherently hilarious, since, as we’ve previously discussed, hobos are the new bears, and bears are the new monkeys.

And a monkey with a bindle staff? That’s pretty amusing. But a tiger holding a bindle staff, even if only to hand it to a monkey? That is fucking genius.*

The organ grinder takes Chico into his well-appointed trailer, and then proceeds to make his dinner, leaving the trapped monkey to devise his escape. This occurs in a wonderful two-page, 12-panel sequence in which Chico uses his various tools in a rather complex plan involving a tape measure, sand paper, math, a “utility-knife-lemon-squeezer-flashlight-banana-peeler,” a kazoo and a “bendy extender.”

The last step is surprisingly simple though:

While the organ grinder is hopping about in pain, Chico jumps out of the box—the screws of which he had already loosened—runs outside and takes the bus home.

Once there, he takes off his tool belt, puts on his pajamas, pus his tool belt back on, tells his tool belt goodnight (?), and dreams whatever sorts of dreams a monkey with a tool belt would dream of.

Actually, Monroe draws a bunch of those dreams. Here’s one:

Huh. I would have assumed that a banana cannon was a cannon that shot bananas, not a banana-shaped cannon that shot monkeys with tool belts…

So, Monkey With a Tool Belt. If you ever buy children’s book, or just check ‘em out at the library, then buy or check this one out. Because it’s called Monkey With a Tool Belt and it’s all about a monkey with a tool belt.



*Sorry. I probably shouldn’t use the F-word when discussing children’s books, but I really needed to emphasize the degree to which a tiger with a bindle is genius. If Monroe and/or Carolrhoda Books want to blurb me on the back of a sequel book, perhaps this will be more age-appropriate: “Move over Curious George! There’s a new monkey king of kids books…and he has a tool belt!”

This post has pretty much nothing at all to do with comics (although drawing is involved in the things discussed within it)

I was walking through my local library the other day when the cover of this children's book caught my eye, and I checked it out on the strength of that image alone.

I'm glad I did; it was a fun read, and a really beautifully designed and illustrated book. 365 Penguins (Abrams Books; 2006) is written by Jean-Luc Fromental and illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet, both of whom are apparently rather productive in the world of children's books (I don't recognize their names, and I don't think I've seen any of their previous work...at least not that I can remember. But then, I don't read a lot of children's books).

This is a nice, big, sturdy hardcover, with a nice spine; it would look nice on a coffee table, and nice on a bookshelf, two things I look for in books because, well, I'm shallow.

As for the story, it's first-person-narrated by a little boy who lives with his mother, father and older sister Amy. It starts on New Year's Day, when they receive a delivery of a a penguin in the mail. They get one penguin a day for the rest of the year (hence the title). The book deals with the frustrations of having multiple penguins living in one's house, and how having 365 of them is pretty much impossible.

Jolivet limits her palette to just black, white, orange and blue and brown, and it works out quite lovely. The pages are all big and airy, which makes the encroachment of the hundreds of penguins seem all the more dramatic, and her penguin designs are killer. Each has a blank expression, only really betraying emotion when in the act of running towards or away from something, with its flippers back and beak open.




As problematic as the penguins prove, it could be a lot worse. The story refers to the cost of feeding them, and obliquely to the problem of penguin waste ("We can't stand the smell! Find a solution!" the family complains, after the boy tells us, "Let's not talk about the other problems...") But they are fairly docile, reamining motionless and going along with the father's attempts to organize them by stacking them in pyramids or cubes and, later, in boxes of a dozen, like eggs.

This works fine when there are only 144 of them, but then they all rush out to greet the 145th. I could actually relate pretty well to the whole "how do we organize these hundreds of things which increase in nuber with every passing day and are completely crowding us out of our home?!" conflict, since it parallels my own ongoing struggle to share my one-bedroom apartment with hundreds of comics and graphic novels.

Thank God I don't have to feed my comics.

Anyway, a really fun book. At $17.95, I probably won't buy a copy of my own, because it's repeated entertainment value is kinda low, but it is an all around well-designed, well-illustrated children's book.









And while I'm not really talking about comics at all, here are three animated music videos I really like, to songs that have spent a significant portion of time stuck in my head...




Peter, Bjorn & John; "Young Folks"




Well, they do use dialogue bubbles in this, so I guess it's kinda comic book-y.

I don't know why exactly, but this video really makes me think of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I think it's maybe because when I close my eyes and imagine Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy, they totally look like the couple doing the singing here. Or that there's a real Mike Allred-ness about the character designs, and Allred's the artist I'd like to see draw the LOSH more than any other.




Los Campesinos; "You! Me! Dancing!"






I happened upon this video purely by accident, and it was my first exposure to Los Campesinos, and, as it turns out, they're a pretty great band. The video itself contains may of my favorite things—laser guns, giant monsters, rocket ships, flying surfboards—and it's cool that it has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrics at all. I really love the song though too, from the Sonic Youth-y slow build at the beginning to the chorus that will embed itself in your brain. See also "We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives." (That seems to be it for videos, but you can hear more music at their myspace page).




New York Dolls; "Dance Like a Monkey"





Dozens of dancing primates, Darwin thrusting his pelvis, Hanuman, Dick Cheney's sneer, King Kong, dinosaurs, a mammoth, an orangutan pope, a hot creationist, a monkey with a jetpack, a gorilla with a top hat, skeletons, Bigfoot... it's like a buffet of awesomeness.

Note the bear who's haning out amidst all the monkeys all the time. He is a terrible, terrible dancer.