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A Comic Book Road Trip Through 31st Century New York City, Springfield And Bikini Bottom: The Simpsons And SpongeBob Smile-Time Hour

Published Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:00:21 -0500

by Rich Johnston

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by Ray Flook

The Simpsons, Futurama and SpongeBob SquarePants are three shows in completely different situations: one is coming-up on its last season after an epic, capping-off an epic twenty-six-year run; one refused to die, spending nine years on the air over two networks with a strong following still; and another that still stands as an icon of children's programming and the foundation of a network for fifteen years and counting. What all three have in common is that they're still surviving (or planning to survive) in other mediums: live-action movies; animated movies; internet shorts; movie theater shorts, etc. To play a brutal pun on the oh-so-wise-and-great words of Doc Brown, "'Shows'? Where we're going, we don't need 'shows'…"

To that end, creative director Nathan Kane and managing editors Terry Delegeane and Chris Duffy wanted to remind the audience at their "The Simpsons and SpongeBob Smile-Time Hour" panel that Bongo Comics Group (with United Plankton Pictures) is still the place to go to get a steady "fix" of your favorite The Simpsons, Futurama and SpongeBob SquarePants characters. Moderated by Delegeane, the panel consisted of: Kane, Duffy, writers Max Davison and Ian Boothby, and artists James Lloyd and Jacob Chabot. Over the course of the forty-five minute presentation and Q&A session, a number of upcoming comic book issues were highlighted and some hints as to what's to come were dropped; and some of those highlights include:

*It's Kang & Kodos! #1 to be released in August, and will include: "The Big Kang Theory" (Kang & Kodos abduct Bart and his friends to help Kang lose weight) and a tale of when Kang & Kodos abducted Cletus and his family.

*The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror #20 will include a parody of Plants vs. Zombies, where we learn what happened to all of those salads Homer hid at the power plant so that Marge would think he was eating them for lunch. Zombie Apu and his family add an interesting wrinkle to the story…and zombienado "will be awesome."

*The Greatest Bartman Stories Ever Told will be the first time these issues have been published in color and in trade paperback format in over ten years.

*The Vault of Simpsonology: C. Montgomery Burns' Handbook of World Domination next in the series, with Lisa Simpson's Girl Geek Chic following in spring 2015. Future editions will cover "aging" with Grandpa; and "super heroes" with Bartman.

*Simpsons Comics Explosion #1 will be in a 96-page, 9"x12" format and consist of reprinted material; and will be available at both comic shops and retail outlets such as Toys 'R Us.

*The Simpsons' Family History: A Celebration of Television's Favorite Family attempts to place the show's history into a chronological format and will be released this September.

*Upcoming Futurama will include the story "Trading Places," where Leela takes over the Nimbus from Zapp Brannigan and goes "a little power mad."

*SpongeBob Comics #37 will be a special "Dreams and Nightmares" issue by Derek Drymon, Theo Ellsworth and Andy Rementer; with Maris Wicks (Primates), Bob Flynn (Bravest Warriors), James Kochalka (Glorkian Warrior), and Gregg Schigiel (X-Babies).

*Tony Millionaire (Sock Monkey) will be drawing a future back cover to SpongeBob Comics; and fans should expect more pirate stories and a Gary-themed issue in the the near future.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ydMVkpfhjg[/youtube]

*The panelists were all big fans of the Futurama 3D animation film made by Alexey Zakharov.

*FOX doesn't require the creators working on The Simpsons and Futurama to run their ideas past them first, but Nickelodeon Animation Studio and United Plankton Pictures (Stephen Hillenburg) are more directly involved in the creation of SpongeBob Comics.

*Before the panel ended, Duffy and Lloyd took a moment to promote a book they both worked on (outside of Bongo Comics Group) entitled Above the Dreamless Dead, a graphic novel that brings to visual life twenty poems from World War I.

(Ray Flook has been a contributing writer to Bleeding Cool since October 2013. Follow him on Twitter: @oldmangeek88; "like" his Facebook page: Old Man Geek; and check-out his website: www.oldmangeek88.com)