The Best of the Three Stooges Comicbooks: Vol. 1

These are the sort of knockabout time fillers originally meant to be consumed in raggedy pulp issues sold for pocket change. Published to coincide with the release of the new Stooges film, this anthology of early-1950s comics won’t disappoint fans of the original films and shorts. In the head-banging, low-grade vaudeville style perfected in their films, the Three Stooges bungle their attempts to find gainful employment as cooks, psychiatrists, drivers, housepainters, and so on. Their dialogue is a stylized patter of Brooklynese dese and dose, while the usual swarthy gangsters and stiff-chinned society swells fill up the background. Joe Kubert and Mauer’s handiwork doesn’t make these comics any more worthwhile, though a particularly bizarre story revolving around “atomic laugh riots” is memorably dated. Ages 8–12. (Apr.)