Welcome back to another edition of Summer Comics!
What exactly is Summer Comics you ask? Well, now that the summer season is well underway, I decided Summer Comics will be the place where I tell you about a random comic book I bought during my past summer vacations. In every edition of Summer Comics, I’ll share some information about that week’s comic and even tell you a few things about that particular vacation.
This week’s comic is Marvel Comics Super Special #32 published in 1984 by Marvel.
Marvel Comics Super Special #32
Writer: Stan Kay
Penciler: Dean Yeagle
Inker: Jacqueline Roettcher
Letterer: Jim Novak
Colorist: Andy Yanchus
Cover Art (Super Special): Warren Kremer
Editor: Sid Jacobson
Marvel Comics Super Special #32 is unlike any other comic book I’ve read. That’s because it collects the 1984 three-issue mini-series adaptation of the film The Muppets Take Manhattan. The script was adapted by Stan Kay with art by Dean Yeagle and Jacqueline Roettcher.
Marvel Comics Super Special #32 basically follows the plot of the movie. However, I didn’t know this at the time because I read the comic before I ever saw The Muppets Take Manhattan.
I came across Marvel Comics Super Special #32 by accident during my summer vacation in 1989. For several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, my family spent two weeks every summer in Nags Head, North Carolina. These were some of the best vacations I ever had, and part of the reason for that is because there was so much to do in the Outer Banks.
We always rented the same house too, right on the beach. The house was big and it had a decent-sized library located between the kitchen and the dining room. I never bothered to look at what the library had to offer since I usually brought my own entertainment in the form of a giant stack of comics books and books from my school’s summer reading list. But during a rainy day in 1991 I feeling bores so I started checking out the shelves. Tucked in between a couple of books I found what I thought was a magazine, but in actuality, it was a copy of Marvel Comics Super Special #32.
![Manhattancomic-inside-02](https://thenerdsuncanny.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/manhattancomic-inside-02.jpg?w=192&h=300)
Since I had been a fan of The Muppet Show when I was little, I decided to give the comic a try. I ended up reading the entire comic over lunch that afternoon, before bed, and several more times during the remainder of my vacation. The comic made me laugh many times, in particular when Kermit gets amnesia, so I kept reading the book. I guess I just couldn’t get enough of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Floyd Pepper, Animal, Janice, Dr. Teeth, Zoot and all the rest.
During one of these readings, I decided that I had to rent The Muppets Take Manhattan as soon as I could. I was curious if the comic book matched the movie, or it the two were completely different. A few days later I got my answer when I found a copy of the movie at a nearby store. To my surprise, the plot was almost identical, and even much of the dialogue in the comic came straight from the movie.
Where things differed were the human characters. No one in the comic looked like their film counterpart. Since I read the comic before I saw the movie, I had no idea what these characters were supposed to look like. Based on the art in the book I certainly wasn’t expecting Gregory Hines, Liza Minnelli, and others. Other characters like Jenny and Ronnie don’t look even close to what you see in the movie. Some characters even have facial hair in the book but are cleanly shaven in the film.
A few scenes in the comic are slightly different as well. For example, the seating arrangement at the wedding differs from the movie’s depiction. But sesame Street characters, including Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Grover, Ernie, Bert, and Herry Monster, still appear at the wedding. Some other scenes are cut short in the comic, like Gonzo’s chickens singing, but that may have been done for time.
At the end of my vacation, I put the comic back in the same place where I found it. The following summer the comic was right where I had left it and the cycle began again. In the end, I read Marvel Comics Super Special #32 so many times that it got shredded. The owner of the house knew I liked the book and said I should just take it.
All these years later I still have the same copy of Marvel Comics Super Special #32 (minus the cover) and I still read it on occasion. To this day I’m still a Muppett fan and I think part of the reason why is because one rainy day long ago, I read about the Muppets taking over Manhattan.