Current issues of two separate Simpsons comics—Simpsons Comics #185 and Simpsons Super Spectacular #14—are stagebound this month. In the former, the usual Simpsons writers and artists interpret a challenging cover concept by legendarily marginal Mad Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones. Three different tales riff on the same Aragones inspiration, a large-cast tableaux of Homer Simpson and the Springfield police chief in ballet tutus.
The Simpsons Super Spectacular satirizes the Spider-man musical with “Radioactive Man—Turn Up the Silence.” (Script by Batton Lash, pencils by Bill Galvan, inks by Mike DeCarlo.) Obvious, perhaps, but the ante is raised by the introduction of a low-rent Off Broadway revue called Crustacean, about Radioactive Man’s nemesis Dr. Crab. The smaller show, in Bat Boy fashion, becomes the bigger hit.