FAMILY GUY: 100 WAYS TO KILL LOIS

By: KURT AMACKER
Review Date: Friday, May 19, 2006

I confess that, despite my many public pronouncements against television, I freakin' love FAMILY GUY. Thank God for TV on DVD. Now, thanks to Devil's Due Publishing and the wonders of corporate licensing agreements, you can get an extra fix of the Griffin family in between their weekly outings on Fox (check your local listings!). Of course, one has to question whether a comic book can adequately convey the manic, reference-laden style of the cartoon, and, more importantly, whether it's even worth the $6.95 it'll cost you.

The first of three issues, 100 WAYS TO KILL LOIS opens with Stewie -- the football-headed baby -- presenting a VH1 style countdown of ways he's tried to cancel his mother's ticket, including poisoning her in-utero and cutting the brake lines of the family car. But, Stewie's macabre countdown only bookends the issue. The rest of the issue shows the Griffin family coping with a homeless guy Peter wants to help. Not content to merely feed him at the shelter, the fat man brings "Gerald" (or so he names him) home and tries to get him a job and friends. Eventually, he decides the only way to save the hobo is to sign the deed to the house over to him. Hilarity ensues.

Granted, the comic book can't convey the nonstop, joke-a-minute pace of the show. Part of the show's appeal lies in its timing. While the comic tries to convey it a couple of times with other visual cues, the medium itself simply can't accomplish what the cartoon can. It pains me to sell comics short as a medium, but I call it like I see it. But, the art looks exactly like the cartoon, so no complaints there.


Overall, 100 WAYS TO KILL LOIS is still pretty funny and maybe worth picking up if you're a fan of the show. Unfortunately, someone at Devil's Due thought we'd all gladly pay $6.95 for a 48-page comic. It's square-bound and printed on a high-quality, laminated stock, but I doubt I'm going to dig this out of a long box in 20 years and say, "Man, I'm glad 100 WAYS TO KILL LOIS is as mint as the day I bought it." While I enjoyed the book well enough, it isn't worth that much, and it doesn't exactly demand the prestige treatment.

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