Monkeys & Midgets!
Written by Mike Gagnon
Illustrated by Nelson Danielson
Smash! Comics
$11.99
In the introduction to Monkeys & Midgets!, Jason Marcy half-jokingly claims credit for the story’s high concept saying, “Monkeys and Midgets! You can’t go wrong with them. Monkeys and Midgets are always good for a laugh!” I’m gonna have to disagree with him though.
Monkeys are indeed always “awesome,” but they’re not always funny. And Little People (many of whom are as offended by the “M-word” as other folks are by the “N-word”) can also be funny, though they aren’t inherently so. As we quickly learn in this graphic novel.
While the concept may have started out as a comical story about Little People fighting apes (which is what the primates in the story are, not monkeys), writer Mike Gagnon went beyond that and actually decided to tell a real story with it. It’s not the slapstick comedy that the title and the opening to Marcy’s introduction suggest. In fact, Marcy says himself that the characters “are real folks trying to make ends meet,” and that the story includes “pathos and drama” as important elements of the book. And that I agree with.
The major problem with the book is that it was conceived and marketed as one thing, but executed as something else. It’s the story of a struggling wrestling league made up of Little People. When the league’s bills start to exceed its income, the unscrupulous owners bring in apes for the wrestlers to fight. But that’s really just backdrop to the real story about a wrestler named Davey Goliath and his quest for both the league championship and the league’s only female wrestler. In a way, it’s a classic sports story told relatively straight. Can the league recover and become successful? Will Davey get the belt and the girl?
Unfortunately, it still has problems as a sports story; mostly the same problems it has as a slapstick comedy. There’s not enough action in it. There are several wrestling matches, but only a couple of them last longer than a page or two. The entire wrestlers vs. apes idea is played out on a single page with the exception of a two-page match between Davey and a masked, talking ape named El Macambre.
El Macambre is another problem. He’s actually a pretty cool character, but he’s a talking ape in a story that’s otherwise grounded in reality. The explanation that he’s able to talk is that his father was an ape and his mother was human, but that’s just as ludicrous and out of step with the rest of the book. It’s like for that one element Gagnon decided to go silly, but it doesn’t work with the tone he’s built up to that point.
I actually liked several of the characters in the book. In spite of the (perhaps unintentionally) derogatory title, the Little People in the book aren’t objects or caricatures. They’re real and I enjoyed spending time with them. I just wish that their story wasn’t so unevenly told and better blended the comedy, action, and drama elements.
