Monsters have it tough. Besides being deeply misunderstood, they suffer from very real problems: Mummies have body image issues, Godzilla is going through an existential crisis, and creatures from the black lagoon face discrimination from creatures from the white lagoon. At heart, these monsters are human; after all, you are what you eat. Quirkily illustrated, Sad Monsters hilariously documents the trials and tribulations of all the undead creatures monster-mad readers have grown to love, from vampires and werewolves, to chupacabras and sphinxes, and even claw-footed bathtubs.
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As cute as this book is, be forewarned -- this book is NOT for children! That being said, there's a lot of satire here that adults will eat up :-) Frank Lesser writes up little short stories that look at the behind-the-scenes lives of some of history & literature's most well-known monsters and villains. And he doesn't just use short story format -- there's also sections where the stories are told through craigslist-like ad listings, diary entries and my favorite, a few passive-aggressive notes {I especially liked the PA note from Dorian Gray's roommate begging him to please take down that creepy painting already! There was also a PA note from a closet monster that had me giggling a good bit :-) }.
March 8: Wound up hitting snooze for six more months. Barely had enough energy to rampage to the bathroom, let alone through a city, but finally rolled out of bed and destroyed Tokyo. Again. Starting to wonder, what's the point? They're just going to rebuild.
~entry from Godzilla's journal, from "Questioning Godzilla's Existence", Sad Monsters
I liked that Lesser worked in a fair amount of modern culture into these tales --- there's the story of Frankenstein's groom, which talks about both Frankenstein and his gay lover feeling like outcasts in society; a story that looks at the idea that maybe vampires aren't allergic to the sun necessarily, but maybe just battle really crippling social anxiety, so that's why they stay in all day; a look at the hipster Chupacabra; a letter of reference for a job the Abominable Snowman is applying for, where his ref says that he's "a go-getter, gruff at first but a good heart, and good with Excel" X-D. Lesser also offers up a pretty entertaining stories about zombies running from humans trying to attack, Medusa on a blind date, and a parody on how to identify the "Maneater" from the famous Hall & Oates song.
Accept the fact that genies rarely update their style. I once made the mistake of telling Shalazam that the "fez look" went out of fashion with the Ottoman Empire, and he turned me into a camel. We laugh about it now, but at the time I wanted to spit in his face.
from "How to Find the Genie of Your Dreams", Sad Monsters
above: hipster Chupacabra
So that's what I liked about it. A couple negatives I could see: 1) this was not a huge issue for me but I thought I would give a heads up to conservative readers -- a couple stories in this collection do incorporate biblical satire. One story involves a merman preacher giving a sermon to his underwater congregation and when referencing the crucifixion of Jesus, he says Jesus was "crucified on two planks of cedar and then grilled. He died for our fins." I found this particular mermaid themed story to be one of the least funny of the collection, not so much because of the biblical satire, I just felt the humor was getting a little forced and was falling flat for me. But I thought I would mention this as a heads up to any readers that may want to avoid possible offense. 2) Speaking of the humor falling flat, I felt like the collection, as a whole, started off really strong, really entertaining. Somewhere around the halfway mark, it almost felt like Lesser was starting to run out of great ideas but needed more to make a respectable length for even a small book, so the stories in the second half seemed more like they were going for the easy laugh. Not to say I didn't get anything out of the later stories, I still enjoyed them. I just felt the best works were definitely more toward the start of the book.
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