Saturday, September 19, 2015

Book Review: WETTER, LOUDER, STICKIER: BABY BLUES COLLECTION #31



WETTER, LOUDER, STICKIER is the 31st "Baby Blues" comic collection. It follows the daily lives of the humorous and relatable MacPhersons family: Darryl the Dad, Wanda the Mom, oldest daughter Zoe, son Hammie, and baby daughter Wren.  The strips in WETTER, LOUDER, STICKIER ran in newspapers from Dec. 30, 2012 – Jan. 4, 2014. Some of the strips have notes from the series creators Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott. My favorites are usually the ones that find Hammie completing some crazy stunt. In this collection, I really like the "Peanuts" reference with Darryl and Hammie playing football. I also thought it was pretty cool they made a "Sharknado" reference in one of the strips. There really aren't very many longer storylines in this collection, but I did like the story arc where Wren names her new stuffed animal a curse word. Overall, the collection itself is a good collection of "Baby Blues" strips.

With that said, I do have one complaint about this collection. In the first 29 collections, the books were almost square (9" X 8.5"). The previous "Baby Blues" collection, BEDLAM had a different format and was 11" X 8.5". I didn't like the size of that book, but WETTER, LOUDER, STICKIER is that same larger size.  I don't like it. There are some strips that end up covering two pages and with those, although the illustrations are bigger than usual, some of the dialogue gets lost in the book binding, making them difficult to read. I hope that in the next collection, the format returns to the traditional size.

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