Customer Reviews

Melvin Monster: Volume One

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4 star:		(4)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The John Stanley Library from Montreal's Drawn and Quarterly has been the talk of 2009, as fans look forward with eager anticipation. The first volume, Melvin Monster, is out at last, after a 32 page teaser comic for Free Comic Book Day that was half Melvin/ half Nancy. That comic gave a pretty good preview of things to come. Like the Library, it was designed by Seth, who gave such a retro look to the Peanuts hardback sets The Complete Peanuts 1950-1954 Box Set. Unlike the Peanuts sets, however, the Melvin cover depicts a stylized design by Seth, rather than Stanley cover art.

Melvin Monster was published by Dell from 1965-1969. There were only ten issues, and the tenth is a reprint of the first. This hardback, color volume includes the first three comics, so there could be two more volumes to cover the entire run. However, unlike the Another Rainbow Little Lulu Library, you don't get the original comic covers, only the stories. There are about a hundred pages of color comics, printed on quality paper, but which looks like the original newsprint, in a handsome, library quality 11 X 8 inch hardback binding. Certainly more archival than the original comics.

Collectors will still likely want the original issues, as some of the covers, at least, have Stanley art. Everyone else may be wondering what's the big deal about John Stanley? In the realm of humorous kids' comics, he was simply without peer, and most of the exceptions one might name turn out to also be by him. The last page in this volume includes a brief bio, and he turns out to be the motive force behind not only Little Lulu and Melvin, but also Dell's Nancy, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Woody Woodpecker, and a half dozen other titles. Not to mention his own teen comics, Thirteen Going on Eighteen, Dunc and Loo, and Kookie, in which he hit his stride, with a deft hand and easy style.

Melvin Monster is not to be confused with Atlas Comics' Melvin the Monster (Dexter the Demon), an offering in the mischievous kid genre, along with Marvel's Peter the Little Pest, neither of which were monster comics. Drawn and Quarterly lists Melvin Monster under "Comics and Graphic Novels/ Horror" but it could also be "humor", hailing as it does from the 'sixties, when the zany monster craze was at its height. Gold Key's The Little Monsters was another whimsical entry in the monster antics genre.

That said, Stanley's writing in Melvin is freewheeling, as few writers before or since, and his art style might be described as primitive. In the Halcyon days when Dell and Gold Key ruled the comics racks, however, it was merely perfect. What Stanley lacked in intricate artistry, he made up in vigor and verve. If this volume included the covers, I'd give it a five. That curious omission aside, here's the series Stanley fans have long waited for, and he may at last take his rightful place in comics history.

Drawn & Quarterly (much like Fantagraphics) has championed artists rights and the artistic merits of cartooning/comic books since they came into existence. So how in the world could they think leaving the covers out of this collection is a good idea? It seems like a DC/Marvel decision to me. No real historical text about Stanley, the comics industry at that point or the importance of the Melvin character in general. The cover and design (by Seth) are handsome, but sorely lacking without the covers and other stuff mentioned. D&Q similarly dropped the ball on the Nancy collection. Please D&Q, get on the ball with the remainder of this series!!!

Melvin is an underrated and underlauded creation of the monster crazy 60's by artist/writer John Stanley. The art and especially the humor of these stories really holds up however. Melvin's journeys, "through the looking glass" from Monstertown to "Humanbeanville", create a bizarre and hilarious little mythology that I enjoyed today as much as I did when they first came out. The presentation in this volume is beautiful, but I wish it contained more than three issues for volume one..

This collection was a very pleasant surprise. I actually remember when these first issues of Melvin Monster were originally published. There was a heck of a lot of "funny monster" material back in the 60's- with a few rare exceptions most of it was pretty forgettable. But not Melvin. Looking back at these stories from a four decade perspective I think I know why they are so memorable. These aren't primarily monster stories, but are really stories of dysfunction and alienation. Don't get me wrong- these are extremely funny stories, it is just that the humor flows from deeper wellsprings...

First of all, Melvin's family is the perfect picture of dysfunction. There is "Baddy" who can barely contain his disappointment and rage at having a son like Melvin. Then there is bandaged, wounded, remote "Mummy" who goes along with "Baddy" and gives no real support. The family pet constantly dreams of killing and eating him, so there is no comfort there. Even his relationship with his cute little witch girl friend is essentially a masochistic one- Melvin is so starved for affection that he puts up with the abuse. Even his guardian demon can't remember his name.

Then there is the fact that monster society (which runs parallel to human society like a monster "ghetto") is absolutely at odds with all of Melvin's instincts. He tries to do what he feels is right and good but it is always condemned as weird and abnormal. The best example of this is the way all "real" monsters are expected to hate school and play hooky. Melvin on the other hand loves school and shows up everyday- only to be punished and scorned by the teacher.

He doesn't fare any better in human "bean" society either. While his impulses should win him admiration and respect, he is instead automatically rejected and feared simply for his appearance and the fact that he is a monster...

That's the whole thing about Melvin, he follows his instincts and tries to do good but he is everywhere and every time rejected by a sick, dysfunctional society that he never made. There were a lot of baby-boomers that could identify with that situation...

I wonder if there wasn't a lot of John Stanley in pointy-headed little Melvin. After all, he worked hard for most of his life to do his best work in an industry that neither appreciated nor adequately rewarded his efforts. In the end he became "Baddy" and could not contain his contempt and rage at the system- even rejecting his own creations.

One last thing- Stanley is often criticized for a lack of originality. Some say that his best work was in embellishing other people's creations. Well, these stories are purely original. They are so original that I didn't even recognized they were his work for many years- and even as a kid I could usually recognize most artist's work even if I didn't know their name. For instance, I could always spot his work on Little Lulu and Nancy. Come to think of it though, I probably should have made the connection between Melvin and Stanley's "Oona Goosepimple" work in Nancy. They share the same sort of weird, wonderful originality.

This also a well-designed book. The scan really does not do it justice. The silver lettering on a black background is sharp, as is the emerald green graphics by Seth. There is no jacket, it is all printed on the leatherette cover of the book. There is an especially nice large silver seal on the back cover for the John Stanley Library. Oh yes, this book also has more nice custom endpapers than I have ever seen on a single volume. The paper is thick and of good quality- there is no "yellowing"- any background coloration appears to be an exact reproduction from the original newsprint.

Thanks to the success of Dark Horse's LITTLE LULU volumes, Stanley "stock" is up, and now Montreal-based D&Q is joining the frenzy with the first of a promised series of volumes collecting Stanley's non-LULU works. MELVIN MONSTER dates from the mid-1960s, by which time (1) Stanley was working for a Dell Publishing outfit that had split off from Western Publishing and was attempting to establish itself as a comics-publishing contender; (2) Stanley was drawing, as well as writing, his stories; (3) Stanley was working entirely with characters of his own creation; (4) Stanley's attitude towards the comics industry was rapidly souring (he would quit altogether by the end of the decade). All four factors have a heavy influence on MELVIN, which, while entertaining enough, doesn't quite measure up to Stanley's peerless work with Marge's characters.

At first glance, MELVIN appears to be drawing upon the same zeitgeist that gave rise to such contemporary TV series as The Munsters and The Addams Family. The title character is, after all, a monster and interacts on a fairly regular basis with humans (or, as Melvin calls them, "human beans"). A closer examination, however, suggests that the character of Melvin owes just as large a debt to that of Casper the Friendly Ghost. To the chagrin of his square-shouldered, hulking, overbearing "Baddy" and bandage-wrapped "Mummy," Melvin wants to be as close to a normal boy as one can possibly be in the abnormality-riddled community of "Monsterville." His attempts to actually attend "The Little Black Schoolhouse," as opposed to buying into the "normal" practice of playing hooky -- thereby scandalizing the "teacher" (a dyspeptic witch) on duty -- are particularly funny. Melvin's attitude towards "fitting in" veers between mild defiance and stoic acceptance (e.g., when he agrees to slide down his slide into a "daggerberry bush" without screaming, only to take refuge in a cave after the fact and painfully give forth with the requisite number of "Ow!"s). The family pet, a crocodile named Cleopatra, is perpetually trying to eat him. Even his "guardian demon," who's supposed to protect him from harm, is fairly useless. Given all of the above factors, Melvin is an easy character for whom to root and should make an appealing hero. His milieu, however, is not as well-defined as it ought to be, and much of that is Stanley's fault.

In the absence of the experienced editorial hands that had been employed by Western, Stanley appears to have had some trouble deciding how, exactly, Melvin should relate to the human world, or even how his work should be organized. Issues #1 and #2 consist of single narratives broken into distinctly titled parts (shades of Harvey Comics' 10- and 15-page stories) in which Melvin takes a "detour" into "Humanbeanville" along the way. These stories plainly suggest that humans live in, so to speak, a different dimension than monsters. With issue #3, we get a paradigm shift: the stories are now stand-alone, and Melvin runs into humans as a matter of course (even getting tracked by "monster hunters"). This is a bit disconcerting, to say the least. In both manifestations, the humans (whom Melvin appears to admire on principle) do behave pretty much the same -- namely, like jerks. A rich owner of a "private zoo" wishes to add Melvin to his collection (where are Superman and Lobo when you need them?); several human kids spin Melvin like a top; a rich couple living in a penthouse mock the "riff-raff" below; and, of course, there are the "monster hunters." The adult characters in the LULU stories never came off as badly as this. Creeping cynicism, you suggest? So do I.

Stanley's artwork in MELVIN reflects a comment that I recall him making about Irving Tripp's artwork on LULU (for which Stanley provided scripts and pencil roughs) being overly "static." Stanley's work is much livelier, if a bit inconsistent: the monster characters are very cartoony in appearance, while the humans look as if they've stepped out of a New Yorker cartoon. Melvin straddles these two extremes, being neither realistic-looking nor overly stylized. Again, a better editor might have suggested that Stanley bring the two disparate styles a bit closer together. Occasional misspellings in Stanley's lettering -- plus an awkwardly-placed caption that appears to have been shoehorned in at the last minute -- lend further credence to the theory that Stanley, working on his own, needed more editorial help than when he was part of a creative "team."

Subsequent volumes of the JSL will reprint Stanley's comic-book work on NANCY -- which, it goes without saying, will probably look and "feel" a lot more like LITTLE LULU -- and such additional all-Stanley enterprises as THIRTEEN, GOING ON EIGHTEEN. It will be interesting to see if the theory that I've posited here -- that Stanley was better working with established characters that he could "embellish" than with original creations -- continues to hold true. Hopefully, D&Q will also include ancillary material that goes beyond a sticker affixed to the back of the volume.

John Stanley was among the greatest of storytellers and humorists of the 20th century. His work can stand with that of Paul Rhymer and Norman Corwin of radio, P.G. Wodehouse in fiction, and his comic book contemporaries, Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, and Will Eisner. Most of his reputation rests upon the work he did for the title "Marge's Little Lulu," published through the mid-'40s and '50s and reprinted by Another Rainbow and more recently, in low-cost format, by Dark Horse. Drawn and Quarterly is now taking up Stanley's post-Lulu work, much of which deserves to be better known. But this first "Melvin Monster" volume is hardly an auspicious start.

"Melvin Monster" was an attempt by Stanley to create a "house property" for Dell after its split from Western Publishing. Melvin is something of a cross between Tubby from "Little Lulu" and the Frankenstein monster, and was obviously inspired by the then-current monster mini-fad of the '60s that brought us "The Munsters," "The Addams Family," "Milton the Monster," and other gimmicky novelties. Like Casper the Ghost, Melvin wants to be a "good boy," but unlike Casper, he has no clear role model. While Casper wanted to befriend and pal around with mortals, it's never clear if Melvin wants to be good like a human or an "ideal monster." The scripts abound with clever ideas and gags, but Melvin's world never coalesces.

Readers new to Stanley or to Melvin might not get enthused for more based on this package. There is only minimal explanatory text, most of it about Stanley and next-to-none about Melvin's place in Stanley's timeline. No covers are reproduced. The book itself collects a sum-total of three issues, one-third of Melvin's newsstand run and maybe only just enough to turn off new readers. The pages are scanned from newsstand copies, very readable but just a shade on the dark side.

While I'm overjoyed to see Drawn and Quarterly publishing Stanley's more obscure work, I wish they'd started with a different title, or had at least provided readers with a little more historical context for Melvin. I look forward to seeing more, and (I hope) better.

The stories are quirky gems but Drawn & Quarterly chose to print them on a horrible yellowed paper leading to muted colours and muddy reproduction in general. Yes, comics were printed on worse paper back then than the comics of today but they weren't all this bad. I own one of the original issues and after over 40 years it looks better -- cleaner colours and lighter paper -- than in this book.

The designer also, apparently deliberately, chose not to reprint the covers.

It's a pity, Stanley deserved better.

Memories came flooding back. As a child I just loved Melvin Monster. But a huge part of that love and fun were all the funny little side jokes and I think, pseudo ads. It was a long time ago but I recall quite vividly quirky little side bits like monster recipes and funny words to familiar tunes . I may have been confused with other comics of that era but I was truly certain it was Melvin Monster, yet there were no such joke sections in this first publication. Does anyone else remember this???