Bart Simpson: Prince of Pranks

by Matt Groening

That irrepressible bad boy, Bart Prince of Pranks , is badder than ever and up to his old tricks in this glorious comic collection from merrymaker of mischief, Matt Groening. These delectable graphic Simpsons funnies from the creator of Life in Hell and Futurama will have you howling with laughter all the way to the Principal’s Office. No joke!  

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Humor, Graphic Novels Comics

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2011

About the author

Matthew Abram Groening is an American cartoonist, television producer and writer from Portland, Oregon.

Groening is best known as the creator of The Simpsons. He is also the creator of Futurama and the author of the weekly comic strip Life in Hell. Groening distributed Life in Hell in the book corner of Licorice Pizza, a record store in which he worked.

He made his first professional cartoon sale to the avant-garde Wet magazine in 1978. The cartoon is still carried in 250 weekly newspapers.

Reviews

[Lotta]

iha ok

[Samantha]

Four stars just because it has a few stories about Ralph Wiggum.

[tony dillard jr]

I was a bit disappointed in this collection of Bart Simpson themed comics. Some of which was no real fault of Bongo Comics. Instead, the blame rests solely on trade paperback edition publisher Harper Collins.
Some of the stories just weren't very good. (Though I think the parody of promotional comics starring Kristy the Clown and a bunch of McDonaldville clones was intentionally bad in a satirical kind of way. And I liked it!) The opener has Bart and Skinner switching roles for a day. Milhouse takes schoolboy Skinner under his wing and persuades him to pull an epic prank on Principal Bart. But before he can do it, Bart cancels school early and that's it. No real punchline to a tale that has a great but cliched plot with some fantastic gags throughout.

The two tales starring Ralph Wiggum were probably the best. In one, Ralph is taken advantage of by Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney. Then then bullies return but it's Bart to the rescue when he starts a rumor that Ralph fought off a gang of bikers.

I'm currently reading a collection of Futurama comics. Also from Bongo Comics and compromised of a similar bullpen of talent, the Futurama books are far superior to what's inside here. Part of it I think is that less is more. The Futurama issues have just 1 large main story and 2 very small backups, if any at all. The Bart books are all made of shorts about 6-8 pages in length. And yet, each story tries to capture the formula of an episode of the Simpsons with a brief storyline that morphs into the main premise by the second act. An average of 7 pages per story just isn't enough time for a quality story that attempts to check off all the boxes of a Simpsons episode formula.

Another thing hurting this book is missing talent. Gail Simone, Sergio Aragones and Ian Boothby are all absent. Their creative plots (and in Aragones' case, illustrations) have created some of my all-time favorite Bongo stories starring the residents of Springfield. I'm pretty sure that there won't be very many memories made from reading this volume.

Now for the thing that wasn't Bongo's fault but 100% the blame of publisher Harper Collins. My book was literally falling apart at the seams. At first, I thought that I could eliminate this problem and glue the pages back into the spine. But towards the end, probably the 3rd to last page, I discovered that 1 freaking page was missing!!!

I understand that this book is 15 years old and yes, I bought it used. But this is not the first book from Harper Collins that I have gotten that had this problem. What are they using as book binder glue? Spit?! As much as this was one of my least favorite collections of Simpsons comics, I still want to own a complete run of stories. So I could either trade this book back in, minis the page (I don't think that's ethical) or I hold onto it in hopes of getting a replacement somewhere down the road. It seems like a lot of hassle for a book that I didn't thoroughly enjoy.

[Quentin Wallace]

If you're a fan of the Simpsons, it's really hard not to like the comics. The art looks really close the TV show, the characterization is usually spot on, and the stories are always entertaining.

[Pamela]

Not nearly as good as some of the other comics. A lot of the stories had rushed endings or just fell flat.

The 50ft Maggie & Bart’s Radioactive man comic were my favourites of the bunch.

[To Read Pile Too Big]

meh. not funny

[Elizabeth]

This read was a lot of fun basically. Some of the better Simpsons comics are in this volume, with lots of fun little stories about different characters (although there is obviously more about Bart than other characters).

I'd definitely recommend this to any Simpsons fan, even as a first look into the Simpsons comics. Plenty of moments that gave me a good chuckle, one to keep in my collection.

[Neko]

Collection of Bart Simspsons comics put into one graphic novel makes for some easy reading when you need a break from 'serious reading'. It's probably one you could sit down and read in one big lot because the stories aren't that long and it's all light hearted kids fun.

[Thurston]

another fun read : )

[libs :p]

READ FOR GRAPHICS READATHON 2020

This one was quite funny and I had a good time reading it. I really liked the pranks and the stories were all really fun.