Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2019 January 09 • Wednesday

There seems to be a consensus that the human brain isn't fully developed until the age of 25 or so.

This probably explains why for me, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is first and foremost a Joel Hodgson show.

Mike Nelson did a great job when he took over, however, and I've been enjoying Jonah Ray's turn even more. He brought back some of the amiable sleepiness that was part of Joel's persona.

So MST3K has been having a really good run, on and off for thirty years now, and has sucessfully navigated numerous changes in casting and even a few in format. They've been on a few different channels and have also lived on videotape, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray and now streaming on Netflix and YouTube and who the hell knows where else (torrent sites, obviously).

But could a Mystery Science Theater 3000 comic book be good?

The somewhat surprising answer is yes!

What was best about MST3K wasn't just that they were making fun of movies because the movies were bad and poorly made. This was occasionally the case but they did demonstrate that they could give any movie the same treatment with similar results because their primary strength was to re-write the movie on screen to make it funny to us, the audience.

So for the comic book version, they've taken some old comic books and inserted themselves into them as well as adding and rewriting text and dialogue, doing what they've always done, just in a different medium.

You can distinguish from what was originally written from what was added or altered by looking for the tiny bubble that marks balloons and captions.

It's a fun read and a nice change of pace from the show!