Each of the Disney Pixar films has been outstanding in its own way, but
for sheer sweetness and inventiveness, it’s hard to beat Monsters, Inc., so I was thrilled to find Monsters, Inc.: Laugh Factory,
a BOOM Kids! graphic novel published in 2010. About a hundred pages
long, this book was written by Paul Benjamin with artwork by Amy
Mebberson and other contributions from Troy Peteri, Aaron Sparrow and
Erika Terriquez. It includes four interconnected “chapters,” each of
which requires protagonists James “Sulley” Sullivan, the jumbo-sized
furry blue monster now running the company that supplies Monstropolis
with energy, and Mike Wazowski, his one-eyed, wise-cracking best friend,
to crack a mystery. Boo, the adorable toddler with whom Sulley shares a
special friendship, has a hand in each tale, as does Celia, Mike’s
snake-haired girlfriend.
One nice thing about this collection is
that each story is fairly long, which allows for a more leisurely panel
pace. I never had trouble jumping from one panel to the next as I
sometimes did when reading Uncle Scrooge in DuckTales: Messes Become Successes.
The pictures and the words tell the whole story every step of the way.
What’s more, there is continuity in the storyline. We’re not just seeing
four tales that happen to take place in Monstropolis; each follows the
other logically. The last story does a particularly good job of tying
the first three together.
Another great element of this book is
the humor. I caught myself laughing several times while reading it.
That’s partly because Mike keeps cracking corny jokes and partly because
Boo is so cute she gives me the giggles, but really, it’s just a very
lighthearted book with plenty of wit. Comical side characters include
Roz, the ornery slug monster who oversees the Child Detection Agency;
Mrs. Nesbit, a well-to-do tentacle creature with a jittery disposition;
and George, an insecure fuzzy orange factory worker who is slightly
smaller than Sulley.
Part of the humor comes from the allusions
to other Pixar movies. For the most part, these show up in the form of
posters, toys and furniture in the rooms of the children whose rooms the
monsters enter in their quest to collect laughter from them. Boo’s room
is a particularly rich source of references. Once I spotted the first
couple of nods, I began searching for them deliberately, and that added
to the entertainment value of the book. Each of them made me smile, but
my favorite is when we see Sulley sitting in Boo’s room, reading her the
Little Golden Book version of Finding Nemo.
Additionally, two other Pixar characters play a fairly significant
role, making this book more entertaining for those who are pretty
familiar with Pixar.
Each of the four stories is a mini-mystery.
In the first, gag props go missing, and since Mike is the top laugh
gatherer at the factory, he becomes the prime suspect and must clear his
name. In the second, Sulley has to figure out why all of the kids
they’ve been visiting lately have been too terrified to laugh. The third
deals with a sudden rash of toy disappearances among the kids on the
monsters’ routes, and the final tale brings the villains from the
previous stories together to kidnap Mike and Sulley, leaving Celia and
Boo to do most of the sleuthing themselves. Though there are a couple of
scary moments, the situation never feels too dire, and the humor is
definitely kid-friendly.
Aside from the four chapters, this book
includes a collection of covers and a page dedicated to a spotlight on
the CDA. It surprised me not to see advertisements for other comic books
and graphic novels, which I’ve encountered in other books from BOOM
Kids!; this makes the book a bit leaner than most. However, I would not
say that it detracts from it. Laugh Factory is an endearing book that follows logically after Monsters, Inc. and easily lives up to its name.
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