I’m a sucker for MAD Magazine-style parody lyrics to popular songs, and I love me some monsters, so I leapt on Sipping Spiders Through a Straw: Campfire Songs for Monsters when I saw it on the shelf at Toronto’s excellent Labyrinth Comics, a store that never fails to delight when I’m in town.
Sipping Spiders delights. Lyricist Kelly DiPucchio has a wicked sense of meter and a wickeder sense of humor, and the two work together to remake songs like “Home of the Strange” (Oh, give me a home/where the Boogie Men Roam/where the ghosts and the green goblins play); “My Delicious Frankenstein” (In a kitchen, in a castle/filled with mold and turpentine/lived a baker, monster maker/and her true love Frankenstein”) and “Creepy Creepy Little Jar” (How I wonder what you are/Up upon that shelf so hi/like a pickled shrivelled guy”).
Artist Gris Grimly (how’s that for a perfect name?) draws a darned good and scary monster, with lots of grime, elaborations, scars and the like. His illustrations have plenty of funny little fillips that reward careful examination, like the worms dribbing off of Zombie Midge in “Zombie Midge is Falling Down” (rolling round, all through town/Zombie Midge is falling down/My pale lady).
Poesy’s 18 months now and she’s just started singing songs, and it’s a real treat to have something more fun that “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to share with her.
Sipping Spiders Through a Straw: Campfire Songs for Monsters