Review by Frank Plowright

There’s an extremely consistent level of quality to all Bart Simpson collections, and Bust-Up continues the winning streak. It’s the usual mixture of longer stories and shorts, and the surprise contributor once again this time is Peter Kuper. He’s better known for his trenchant political commentary, but his art style adapts surprisingly well to the Simpsons.

With a town full of well-established characters with quirky personalities, the sheer variety of creative ideas on the longer stories is again astounding, with the best of them being the more original concepts. One can’t imagine anyone other than Carol Lay conceiving the idea of Lisa designing a maze in cornfield, with the additional fine touch of it being based on her idol Bleeding Gums Murphy. Two others running over eight pages are coincidentally both drawn by John Delaney (sample page). Ian Boothby’s story of Bart accompanying Ralph Wiggum as child cops and John Jackson Miller’s about a fundraiser both benefit from featuring a large cast and a high joke ratio. Miller with James Lloyd also delivers a gem about Bart exploiting ads in old comics. Lloyd fills the panels with both the cast and assorted cultural ephemera.

Miller’s also responsible for the final story of the Simpsons taking a train journey, but a lower joke density and a more obvious plot mean it’s good without reaching this collection’s peak. Rex Lindsey, though, is another excellent cartoonist. While some of Kuper’s style remains and Sergio Aragonés maintains his regular look, all other artists are excellent at delivering a uniformity, meaning almost every page has the look familiar for so long on the TV show.

The weakest inclusion is from Tom and Henry Gammill, based around Maggie Simpson becoming a renowned shoe designer. It leads to some funny illustrations from John Costanza, but even for The Simpsons the premise is improbable.

Overall, though, a high level of quality is pretty well guaranteed with any Bart Simpson collection, and this doesn’t break a winning run. Breaks Out is next.