(W) Carol Lay & Various (A) Mike Kazaleh & Various (CA) Jason Ho, Mike Rote
In the first of Bongo Comics' soon to be legendary Simpson Comics One-Shot Wonders, Ralph Wiggum takes center stage. In his first solo outing, Ralph has a day off of school, is left home alone, and becomes a role model to a new kid in town. Add in some short features by Sergio Aragonés and watch the chaos ensue!
Date Available: 02/29/2012
BONUS REVIEW by Matt Streets
The noted French poststructural theorist Michel Foucault once remarked:
“It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into
the forms of representation) that possess revolutionary force.” When
this concept is applied to the actions of Ralph Wiggum, we are able to
see the world through his eyes, and see that this newly created universe
is not only Wiggum’s, but ours as well. The second tale of this issue,
the sublimely brilliant “Ralph Wiggum’s Day Off”, shows Ralph
re-shaping the universe to his subjective means, where he decides to take
a stroll around town and be “in the future”. In a stunning scene set
in an art gallery, Ralph becomes a piece of performance art, and then
exclaims, “If I’m happy in the future, I must be in it all the
time!” Is this perpetual denial of a present state of existence an
indulgence of Freud’s “pleasure principle”, or simply Ralph’s way
of avoiding the death of his own ego? Later, he helps a man to not
commit suicide (though seems disturbingly indifferent as to the outcome),
and finally meets his father who “drove out of the TV box” to take
him home. Throughout this tale, adults and passerby seem not to hear the
“nonsense” coming out of Ralph, which seems to implicate us, the
reader, in this world-shaping apparatus of Ralph’s mind, a subtle
manner in which to break the third (and even the fourth?) wall. It
remains to be seen if there are going to be any future issues, but this
certainly seems poised to rock the very foundations of the comic world,
and of reality itself.
