A life of books . . .
Similar to the last two (Bob’s Burgers Vol. 1 and Medium Rare), we get to spend more time with the Belcher children off-screen.
We’ve got more musicals from Gene, Erotic Friend Fiction from Tina, and mayhem and mystery from Louise. I really appreciated that with this collection we got a couple of longer stories and a continuation from the previous collection. The authors were always great at pulling in various details from the show and making these comics feel like they’re part of the show.
These really are great palate cleansers! We bought this one when we bought Bob’s Burgers: Volume 1 on our trip to NYC this past January. We got a third one and I ordered the remaining two when we got home, so I’m looking forward to reading the rest. I can definitely see an improvement in the stories and the sections of these issues bound together. They’re tighter, funnier, and more on character than those in Volume 1.
The two biggest changes in these issues (and thus this volume) were Bob and Linda’s. Bob’s got better, he designed food truck ideas, and Linda’s got worse, her’s were now just family photo attempts. Tina and Louise’s sections each had standout pieces, but Gene’s takes the gold in this collection.
Tim found the first three when we swung by Midtown Comics in NYC with an hour to kill before seeing Wicked. I’m looking at these as palate cleansers between the other books I’m reading. I don’t give major reviews of these, because there isn’t a lot to review. Each issue, of which there are four or five in each of these collections, in general consists of five parts: Tina’s Erotic Friend Fiction, Bob’s section, Louise’s Unsolved Mysteries and Curious Curiosities, Linda’s section, and Gene Belcher Presents. Linda and Bob’s sections changed (or were left out) between this first collection and the second, so I’m not sure what to call them.
I can’t believe I’ve had this on my shelf for as long as I have. It’s been almost TWO YEARS since I bought it. TWO YEARS! I’m not sure I would go so far as to say this is THE pinnacle of Jane Austen fan-fiction, but it’s pretty close.
I say this for a couple of reasons the primary being that Baker didn’t deviate too far from Austen’s characters, she stayed true to them and only played with the background characters (they’re less than minor) and filled in their back stories. The secondary reason I say this is because it received reviews in the major publications and was fairly mainstream for Austen fan-fiction/inspired fiction. I mean sure you’ve got the major adaptations like Bridget Jones’s Diary and Clueless, but those are both modern adaptations.
I’ve put off posting this since August 1. I actually had a draft scheduled for September 3, and again for both October 1 and November 2. And yet here we are almost two full weeks into November and It’s just now being posted.
When I started this post the first line was: Good Bye Summer/not really damn weather. Now it’s more like holy hell the cold has arrived (not really, but it was below freezing the morning I wrote this). I’m going to keep it pretty simple so I can just get this thing posted. I do have the last two books queued up but am spreading them out over the next two weeks so I at least get a post a week. Continue reading “August, September and October Recap 2018”