BOOM! Studios continues to impress me with every new project they put out. From the Stan Lee projects to the new Peanuts books, BOOM! has developed a reputation of both quality and diversity. Their latest endeavor comes from the twisted minds of Shannon Wheeler and Simon Max Hill. It’s a send-up of the old Lil' Golden Books we used to read called Grandpa Won’t Wake Up, and it’s hysterical in its wrongness.
Grandpa Won’t Wake Up is the tale of two children who try and wake up their grandfather so he can take them to the park. When the kids cant rustle old gramps, they come up with different ways to try and wake him up. While their plans start off innocently enough, it’s not long before poor grandpa is subjected to being dressed up as a Nazi and having his hair lit on fire. As the story heads toward its inevitable conclusion, the indignities grandpa suffers are both demented and hilarious.
So, if you grew up reading Lil’ Golden books and want to see what would happen if they were written by two psychopaths, then you should pick up Grandpa Won’t Wake Up. It’s a disturbingly funny take on the stories of our youth.
4 out of 5 Fractured Children’s Tales
P.S. The list of other Little Boom Books on the back cover had me laughing out loud, my favorite title being Mommy’s MMORPG.