Your Thoughts: The Muppet Show Comic Book

[albertjohn3]

Muppet Show #1 comes out next week 1/6/10

 

[minor muppetz]

It's been reported that the first in the "On the Road" storyline and the "Peg-Leg Wilson" paperback will come out on th sixth, but comic book resources doesn't have previews for either, yet does have previews for other Boom! titles coming out this week.

 

[dwmckim]

Looks like the date got pushed back - it wasn't included in the next week's releases part of Boom's site last time i checked.

 

[minor muppetz]

Well, I found a copy of "Pigs in Space", and it is better than I expected. I wasn't too big a fan of the artwork when I saw it online, but I'm liking it better in person.

I noticed that many minor characters seem to be miscolored... Thog, a Java Muppet, I can't tell if that's Mildred or Gladys who appears at the bar (I'm willing to bet that it's a miscolored Gladys).

I want to see more of the occassional one-shots like this. Maybe in the future there can be a Veterinarian's Hospital one-shot, or something based on events from one of the movies.

 

[frogboy4]

I finally read through the Pigs in Space comic. I absolutely love the artwork! The stylization works perfectly for every character except Miss Piggy. It's weird because she's the artist's favorite character, but the pig just doesn't rise to the level of the rest of the Muppet gang. It's easy to get lost in the rest of the stellar art and content so that complaint stops here. I just want more Pigs In Space!

I have to admit that the only artist to get Miss Piggy 100% right in graphic form these days is artist Peter Savieri. The Langridge Piggy is very cartoony and the Piggytink has started looking a little wide-eyed and cutesy for my taste in recent issues. Not to knock her. She looks nice and is by far the best pig going in any of the official Boom comics, but Savieri knows his mature goddess Piggy. His googley-eyed, four-fingered Gonzo is a different story.

I encourage you to go to Tough Pigs and search for his artork. Such a treat! Disney should swipe him up to do an illustrated Piggy art book. I'd pay top dollar for some glossy images of his Miss Piggy! I don't know what Muppet fan wouldn't.

 

[Drtooth]

I have to admit, I'm actually drawing something with Piggy right now, and frankly, she's not the easiest character to get down right. Only ones I have real trouble with are Gonzo (I keep making him look like his Baby version) and Big Bird (there's an annoying subtlety to his head and placement of the beak that I swear I'll get one day).

I REALLY liked Shelli's Link Hogthrob. The artwork in the PIS one shot has a nice cartoony flow to it that makes it its own.


Of course, the only character I really had a problem with in all the comics combined is Eel Clifford in Robin Hood... he was drawn nicely in that one closeup, but awful all the other times. And I gave that guy the benefit of the doubt.

(Still, my dream Muppet Comic features a bunch of short silent gagas by Sergio Aragonez... he does Simpsons comics now.)

 

[Amy]

Piggy IS very hard to draw and give her the emotional range that she has. Indeed, when you're drawing ANY of the Muppets, there's a very fine line between just copying them from life and giving them JUST a touch of tooniness to give them some acting ability on paper.
If you copy them too closely from, say, screencaps, they tend to look stiff.
You've probably noticed with Piggytink that I play with her eyelids sometimes to imply frowning.

Pete Savieri's stuff IS very good indeed, but (i think) a little too 'perfect'. As single pinup images, they're awesome, and these are just the kind of Piggy pictures I'd love to do more of. But I don't know if he could 'unlock' Piggy from her default face if she had to act.
Like frogboy said, he'd be great for still or cover images.

 

[minor muppetz]

Well, Tough Pigs now has a five-page preview of the first "On the Road" issue, and it's said that Tough Pigs will start showing preview pages for the comics (so I guess we don't have to cosntantly check comic book resources anymore).

I noticed that the artwork looks a little bit different than previous comics (besides Pigs in Space). I wonder if Langridge was going for a different style or what... Can't quite pinpoint the difference.

As I suspected, the two-page comic takes place on the road. It's not as good as the two-page spreads from the first four, but is better than the backstage spreads from The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson.

 

[Beauregard]

I laughed at least once per page, so that's me still interested!

 

[Drtooth]

Piggy IS very hard to draw and give her the emotional range that she has. Indeed, when you're drawing ANY of the Muppets, there's a very fine line between just copying them from life and giving them JUST a touch of tooniness to give them some acting ability on paper.
If you copy them too closely from, say, screencaps, they tend to look stiff.
You've probably noticed with Piggytink that I play with her eyelids sometimes to imply frowning.

Tell me about it. But yeah, I really like the Disney animation like flow of the artwork in Peter Pan. It's a nice balance of getting the puppet likenesses down, but in the style of the artist, while making it look animated. It's a great contrast to the wacky underground comix feel that Langridge's work has. You get to see all these different adaptions of the same characters, and I think they're all wonderful. In fact, if there's one problem I had with the Robin Hood artwork, it was that it looked very stiff and the artist just couldn't find his voice with half the characters. Seems like with half of the characters, he was trying to copy Rodger's Style while trying to make that his own. His Kermit and Gonzo are dead giveaways.

Speaking of which...

I noticed that the artwork looks a little bit different than previous comics (besides Pigs in Space). I wonder if Langridge was going for a different style or what... Can't quite pinpoint the difference.

To me it seems like he's relaxed into a comfort zone with the characters. And that's a GOOD thing. After doing 8 issues of the regular comic (plus that preview issue and those DA comics that I hope we see the rest of) he's found the perfect blend between stylization, representation, and comfort in drawing them. If you try to draw something at first, you will need to, not so much copy, but you'll need to look at some reference... and after a while, drawing them will be like second nature to you. Sort of like the difference between early Gilchrist Muppet comics being almost exact representations of the characters, and the later ones being closer to his own style. It happens. And I'm glad to see when an artist is comfortable enough with the characters, the likenesses feel smooth.