The Trouble with \t\t Girls

Lester Girls wants a mundane life—Cs in school, dead-end job, plain \t\t wife—and more than anything else, a good night's sleep. It's not his fault \t\t that he can't go for a drive without terrorists launching missiles at him, or \t\t walk into one of his many mansions without a beautiful, talented, buxom woman \t\t reposing half-dressed on his bed. He's so dashing and capable he just can't \t\t shake the fame and fortune. Poor Mr. Girls is the creation of nonfiction \t\t authors Jacobs and Jones, a lost gem of late '80s comics, hence the occasional \t\t mullet on view. Rescued from obscurity, the first seven issues of the comic \t\t show not only an intelligent James Bond satire but a genuinely endearing hero \t\t whose plight, however absurd, we can't help sympathizing with. Hamilton's \t\t clean, linear art evokes classic superhero comics. In one stunning four-page \t\t set piece, Apache Dick, a Girls analogue who loves the high life, launches an \t\t escape that starts with pole-vaulting the Great Wall of China and ends with \t\t crawling from the smoking wreckage of a kamikaze plane muttering only, \t\t "bungalow." The Trouble with Girls is satire \t\t with restraint, charming and hilarious. (Dec.)