Comics: The Three Stooges; A Hardcore Review

It's tough to write a conclusive comic book story arc in six issues. So I can't imagine how difficult it must be to capture the life of a comedic legend, who's career spanned decades in just 24 pages, let alone FIVE. But that's what this book and it's creative team managed to do. And I know what you're thinking, "it says Three Stooges, not five." And you are so right, and wrong at the same time. Today the Hardcore Review is tackling three (five) lummoxes that were a comedy dynamo, Bluewater's Comics: The Three Stooges, which is the third issue of the Comics biographical series written by Jaymes Reed and drawn by issue one's Apriyadi Kusbiantoro. And recently, I have become a fan of the art of the documentary.
Reed again somehow does what might seem the impossible, to make people care about our history. And in a day and time when it's so fucking relevant to know about our past, we as a species, called Americans, seem to fall ever short. When we have a former comic book god like Frank Miller, bashing the Occupy Wallstreet movement, and even the Republican party silently gagging everytime Mitt Romney hits their tax payer funded flat screen televisions, we need to remember what it was to laugh. And I remember, like all of you, busting my sister on the head with a ferris wheel fist, or torquing someone's nose with a pair of pliers, that there was a comedy troupe that preceeded Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live. History my friends. And I am happy to report that I learned something. I know, learned something from comics. The fuck did I learn from comics other than Miller's illustrious word smitherie of, "I'm the goddamn Batman?" But I did. I found out a few things actually. First is Curly was NOT an original Three Stooge. That was Shemp. And another fancy tidbit, Shemp, Curly and Moe were brothers.
There was like only 2 word balloons in the entire book. Which, much like issue one about George Carlin was really not all that funny. The Stooges were born at the turn of the twentieth century. And it wasn't until after the Great Depression where they made their mark on not just the comedy world, but the entertainment world at large. And before when I said there were actually five Three Stooges, there were factually six, although Joe Besser, who was only known on screen as "Joe" was a very short lived career as a Stooge.
You know, the only complaint I think I even have about this book would be, I think I might have liked it even better in black and white. But that's only cause that's how I remember the Three Stooges. Well that and a better grad on my Reid Park Zoo project in design school. I did a Three Stooges parody piece that paraded the "Three Simians," with three different types of apes, with the classic Moe, Larry and Curly haircuts. Complete with the old school Three Stooges font and everything. But that's got nothing to do with Reed and Kusbiantoro's fine work here.
As some of you may know, and I'm seriously getting kinda fucking tired of reminding you, I don't review like some fat schlub from Chicago, or some pansy assed douchebag from some gossip rag piece of shit that spawned John Tesh. I don't even used a letter system, you know, like most of you got in remedial English. According to a friend, I am using "the lowest common denominator," but then again, according to me, I hate KISS and all they stand for. So here I go with my grade. The moment was something, nobody was ready for, and got somebody in a lot of trouble with his boss. In 1994, Mick Foley as Cactus Jack wrestled for WCW. When they established a shortlived relationship with the upstart ECW, Cactus wrestled Sabu in a dream match. Cactus lost, but not without delivering one of the most violent sounding chair shots I've ever heard, with a plastic fucking chair. And then afterward, Cactus delivered one of his most poignant promos ever, when he spit on the WCW World Tag Team title belt. This pissed off his boss, WOOOOOO, the man who would later call Foley nothing more than "a glorified stuntman," Ric Flair.