The Muppets Take Manhattan Comic Book

Welcome back one of my favorite children's book bloggers, Ariel S. Winter, author of the fab We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie and the forthcoming picture book, One of a Kind. He's here with more Muppet memories!

Not exactly a "book" book, but hey, it's all good.

The Muppets Take Manhattan Comic Book
Jim Henson's Muppets ~ Star Comics ~ 1984

In my memory, I got this at the movie theater when I saw the movie, but now looking at the issue, I think that's unlikely. In part because I also remember it being the full story, not a single issue, (and there was a full-story special released, so I might have that somewhere, too), but also because it was with a bunch of other random Marvel titles.



My mother had a patient in the early '80s who worked for Marvel, and she'd occasionally bring me large yellow interoffice envelopes, the kind that closed by wrapping a string around a cardboard disc attached with a grommet, stuffed with an assortment of comics. Those were the seeds of my now vast comic book collection. This particular issue's cover is completely separated from the rest of the comic, so I must have looked at it frequently.

However, the thing I remember the most is this Fig Newton maze advertisement (which includes the now defunct and often mourned Apple Newtons, as well). I probably remember the ad best because it was in other comics, as well. As a whole, I found while scanning this issue that the advertisements excited me more than the comic itself. Mario Bros for Atari. Star Wars: The Arcade Game for Atari. The New York Comic Book Convention. And diamond rings sold by Military Diamond Sales out of Malibu, CA. (I don't know who they thought was in the audience reading a Muppets comic that would be in the market for a diamond ring.)

That last is most confusing since these comics were published by Marvel in their Star Comics line, which were comics targeted to a younger audience. That was where the US ThunderCats comic was printed and the US Masters of the Universe comic, and most relevant, home to the long running Muppet Babies comic book. If anyone has the other issues of the mini-series, I encourage you to scan them and post them, so people can enjoy the whole thing.

I've posted a complete scan of the first issue of the comic adaptation of The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) on my Flickr set, here.

Other Muppet books:
Muppets at Sea
Muppet Madness
The Muppet Movie

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