Comic Book Resources review NANCY and THE BOOK ABOUT MOOMIN, MYMBLE, AND LITTLE MY

When faced with the challenge of adapting Ernie Bushmiller's classic comic strip to longer comic book format, John Stanley's response was simple and economical: Turn her into Little Lulu.

That's the only conclusion I can come to after reading this collection of stories in D&Q's ongoing "John Stanley Library" project. Nancy is pretty much Lulu with frizzier hair, Sluggo is a thinner and slightly more benign Tubby. There's even a snotty rich kid and bratty little boy similar to Wilbur and Alvin. Stanley even repeats one of his Tubby stories involving a burglar almost note for note.

That doesn't make Nancy a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. Mediocre Stanley is still miles above most people's best work. The best stories here though are the ones involving Oona Goosepimple, an odd, Wednesday Addams-type girl who supernatural antics cause no end of anxiety for poor Nancy. It's those stories where Stanley -- freed of the Bushmiller formula -- really gets inventive and inspired. If the ratio of Oona stories increases as the volumes do, then I'll keep buying these books as long as D&Q are able to get them out.

Reviews of Moomin, Amulet and more can be found after the jump ...

The Book About Moomin

The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My
by Tove Jansson
Drawn and Quarterly, 20 pages, $16.95.

I'm a sucker for die-cut books -- anything that plays upon the whole "Oh, it looks like it's part of the page, but look closely and you'll see it's a window into the next one" thing gets extra points from me. And D&Q has already won me over on Jansson with the wonderful job they've done reprinting her Moomin strips, so it's not like I had to be won over with the company's first entry in their new kids Enfant line. The only real surprise here is Jansson's lovely use of limited color and composition on these expansive two-page spreads. So yeah, it's a great book that will be sure to please the young and old at heart. Buy it, read it, enjoy it.