Fighting over who’s the cutest?
The Phoenix #1 & #2: The Weekly Story Comic (Double Issue)
Okay, here’s what I found. The Phoenix is a British comic magazine for kids…which is already one step above the US right now. It’s an anthology so we’re going to just race through this, which should be easy because the comics seem to be only a few pages.
I’m using the “Double Issue” that’s posted to ComiXology. Why did I add this to my library? I guess to support kids comics. I don’t even remember adding it, but it might have been there for years. I’m also going to work through the longer comics, not the really short strips because there’s going to be enough to review as it is and I’ll be doing this again on Saturday with Blue Beetle. So let’s zoom through this.
Partway through this review I realize it wasn’t going to work out. It’s 48 pages, counting the cover, activities, and some promotional material. So I had to pivot to more of an overview. I will point out the cover story though, Bunny Vs. Monkey, Truly nature’s most mortal enemies? The British space program tries to launch a monkey into space…by catapult apparently. Landing in the nearby woods, he decides to take over the “planet” he’s just landed on. Not that the animals in the forest seem much smarter, except for one bunny rabbit who tries to convince the dope he’s still on Earth and trying to take over is rude.
The humor is really not for me. We have a story where a kid dies through a quick series of really silly events that ends with him drowning in his soup (no, explaining that won’t help), but ends up getting isekaied. There he meets a talking crow after falling into a giant bowl of soup. In “Corpse Talk”, host Adam Murphy digs up Nicholas Tesla, who talks about his actual inventions (supposedly) before killing the host with his death ray. I’m starting to think British humor is beyond me, and I enjoy stuff like Danger Mouse and Monty Python, so maybe I just don’t jibe with British kids?
The only complete story thus far. features a man telling the story about how his grandfather and father were out hunting when daddy was still a boy (thus not daddy yet). They come across a group of animals listening to the song of the phoenix as it builds a nest, burns, and then leaves an egg that hatches a new phoenix. It’s interesting but that’s all that happens. It’s the rare non-comedy in a series of one page gag comics where I really don’t follow the humor.
There’s also a problem in that this really is issue #1 and issue #2, stitched together so when it comes to a multiparter you have to wait until the second half of the comic. There is a neat segment about teaching kids to make their own comics, with the second one about how comics don’t have to just be about superheroes. Make comics about something you love, like your favorite hobby. (Just please don’t turn superhero comics into non superhero comics just because.) Otherwise though this comic wasn’t for me. I mean, literally. It was made for seven year old British kids with a different sense of humor than I have. I can at least appreciate the art and effort but I’m not really interested in keeping up with this comic.
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