The premiere issue of “SpongeBob Comics†took a long time to hit newsstands, given that his show made it onto the air in 1999. Even though what’s here wasn’t necessarily worth waiting 12 years for, it’s nice to know that it’s faithful enough to everybody’s favorite sponge to give him the colorful treatment he’s used to, and that he’s lost none of the charm that makes him so darn loveable. Sure, it has a habit of being offbeat and uneven, but what can you expect from a comic where the principal character lives in a pineapple under the sea?
Much like episodes of the TV show that make it come across as less of a sitcom than long-form sketch comedy, the stories here are mostly in bite-sized format, the centerpiece of which involves SpongeBob’s rigid co-worker and neighbor, Squidward. He doesn’t care for his job at a fast-food joint to start with, but with so many noises bothering him all day, he thinks piping in music through a sound system might help him keep his sanity. Of course, he didn’t count on his boss Mr. Krabs wanting to play something other than the music Squidward put together with his clarinet.
Everything else here is even simpler than that, like the story about a nightmare SpongeBob keeps having involving a box of cereal that comes with more than breakfast, and an encounter with his favorite superheroes, Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. You’d think such shenanigans would get to him after a while, but he presses on with a smile that’s as big during his not-so uneventful trip to the kitchen for a snack as it is when he fulfills a bizarre calling at the discotheque. Not even the Joker can keep grinning that long.
“SpongeBob Comics†does OK in keeping up with his monkeyshines (or sea-monkeyshines, if you prefer something more aquatic), but if there’s anything here that holds it back from recreating the spirit that the show has, it’s the way it takes its eccentricities for granted. One of the reasons why the show got as big with parents as it was with kids had to do with how self-aware the material was – when Squidward complained about how irritating the idiot in the pineapple next door could get, it was the writers’ way of letting us know that was part of the joke. Maybe “SpongeBob Comics†just hasn’t found its sea legs yet.
This article originally appeared on AllMediaNY.com
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