The spring of 1991 saw The Simpsons nearing the end of its second season in style, climaxing with the two-blow gut punch of "Lisa's Substitute" and "The War of The Simpsons", back-to-back episodes that demonstrated what an uncanny flair the ostensibly grotesque cartoon had for devastating drama. The emotional stakes had never felt higher, the consequences of the characters' choices never more pressing and intimate. With the penultimate episode, "Three Men and A Comic Book" (7F21), we can feel the season making a conscious effort to ease itself into palate cleansing mode; I suspect it's not a coincidence that its two most emotionally painful episodes were followed up by one of the series' most purely fun offerings to date, enabling viewers to head into the summer with more of a light-hearted skip in their step (the actual season finale, "Blood Feud", would be held over for an unusually belated July debut). That might seem like an odd proposition. After all, in its third act "Three Man and A Comic Book" becomes dark and physically nasty in ways that those aforementioned episodes didn't, with Bart descending into feverish paranoia, Martin being falsely imprisoned and Milhouse threatened with a drop from the Simpsons' treehouse. We might have been on the edge of our seat during that sequence in "Substitute" where Lisa finally loses her cool with Homer and repeatedly calls him a baboon, but neither character was endangered in quite so blunt and concrete a way as Milhouse is here. The distinction being that "Three Men and A Comic Book" remains, at all times, an intrinsically playful scenario, even as its pivotal conflict grows ever more alarming. The narrative tension is driven by something so small - a particularly elusive edition of a comic book starring Springfield's favourite radioactive superhero - and the calamity it inspires is ultimately so disproportionate (even with its $100 price tag) that there's only so seriously it warrants being taken. I think we've always enough confidence that Bart is neither crazed or depraved enough that he'd sacrifice his best friend in order to preserve said comic, even as he's assuring the hysterical Milhouse that a fall wouldn't be the worst possible outcome, since the atmospheric rainstorm would potentially soften him up on the way down.
"Three Men and A Comic Book" is a significantly lighter installment than its two direct predecessors, yet it still feels every bit as audacious, particularly with the wild gambits taken in its final act. For the first two thirds, it tells a grounded story dealing with an all-too relatable childhood conundrum - the problem of cash and how to accumulate it fast when you're young and craving something well beyond your means - and then for the big finish relocates its action to the confines of the treehouse, signifying our sudden escalation into more dizzying and dangerous heights. From there it becomes largely a three hander between Bart, Martin and Milhouse, with Marge and Homer getting the occasional interjection. We experience the claustrophobia of being perpetually surrounded by those rugged treehouse walls, exacerbating the intense absurdities of the climactic showdown and illustrating the extent to which our titular trio are mired together in their mutual suspicion, cut off from anything resembling reason and good sense, and with a brutally long way to fall on their inevitable crash back down to Earth.
The theme of corrupted childhoods is established in the gleefully irreverent first scene, where Bart and Lisa pass their time en route to Springfield's 12th annual comic book convention devising a dark fan theory connecting two of Harvey Comics' flagship characters. Bart's proposal that Casper The Friendly Ghost is really the spirit of the deceased Richie Rich is intriguing, as is Lisa's deepening of the lore with the speculation that Richie possibly took his own life after realising how misspent it was in pursuit of dollars - but alas, not consistent with the canon of the 1995 feature film (which is the canon that primarily matters when it comes to Casper), where Casper was revealed to have died of pneumonia. Actually, based on the anecdotes that director Brad Silberling had to share on the film's DVD commentary, it seems that the powers that be over at Harvey Comics would sooner you didn't think of Casper as the spirit of a deceased child, period (however much his being a ghost automatically invites that line of thought), but rather as a separate entity altogether. According to Silberling, Harvey Comics heavily contested that particular plot point of the feature film, along with Casper's infatuation with Kat and Dr Harvey's falling to his death, however readily undone by the Lazarus (jeez, they were against everything about this film that was interesting or meaningful). Being a Casper fan, what I most appreciate about this exchange is Lisa's rebuttal when Bart refers to him as Casper The Wimpy Ghost: "I think it's sad that you equate friendliness with wimpiness, and I hope it keeps you from ever achieving true popularity." Well said, Lisa. I won't have anybody dissing my boy Casper except the Ghostly Trio (given it's their thing and all).
The hypothetical sad fate of Richie Rich subtly foreshadows where the story is headed, with Bart's fixation on material acquisition being the thing that invites his own (less macabre) misfortune, although to begin with there is something undeniably innocent and wholesome about his desire. For a long stretch, "Three Men" is about how much Bart wants a comic book and the lengths he'll go to make it his own, effective because writer Jeff Martin has such a keen empathy for what it's like to be a child and to feel such an intense longing that the world almost seems to stop turning until the item you craved was safely in your hands. It's a bit like "Marge Be Not Proud" in that regard, except the events don't take anywhere near so distressing a turn. Plus, Bart actually was able to learn and grow from his experiences in that episode, whereas "Three Men and A Comic Book" strikes me as being almost an anti-coming of age story, in which the possibility of growth is suggested but ultimately shot down - making the title, in which the three warring school boys are identified as men more than a little ironic. It is a reference to the 1987 movie Three Men and A Baby (one of those hit comedies of the 1980s that I don't think is all that well-remembered today, although it comes with a fabulously freaky urban legend involving the alleged ghost of yet another deceased child); that the pivotal comic book has taken the place of the baby marks it out as something for which the boys have a shared and very crucial responsibility. Having purchased the elusive comic and devoured what wonders its pages conceal, they now have the mutual challenge of needing to grow beyond that innocent desire and figure out how to jointly nurture their incredible acquisition. They've made an investment in the future, and we know that they're doomed to blow it from the moment Martin insists that they want to keep the comic in optimum condition so that the last one of them alive might have the honor of being buried with it. Not to preserve it for succeeding generations of comic book fans, so that one day another child just like them might have the excitement of getting to read it. Heck, not even so that it can eventually be resold to another collector for an even bigger sum. We watch as their selfishness and jealousy becomes increasingly volatile, and the title takes on an additional meaning, evoking not just a Ted Danson comedy about child-rearing, but also the old proverb about how multiple dogs and one bone will seldom agree.
The comic in question is the first ever issue of Radioactive Man, originally published in November 1952 with the unassuming sale price of 10 cents. Copies in 1991 are hard to come by, and Comic Book Guy, making his debut at the convention, won't part with his for anything less than $100 (he insists that the comic is worth a lot more than that, but he's offering to it to Bart for lower because he reminds him of himself - a purportedly generous gesture that, based on his actions elsewhere in the episode, is presumably just part of his sales pitch). Alas, Bart only has 30 dollars to his name, but his reverence for Radioactive Man is through the roof - less for his heroism than for the fact that he never beats up a villain without delivering some cheesy quip (he makes his point by showing Lisa a comic where Radioactive Man punches a guy into the sun while asking, "Hot enough for ya?", although if you ask me that's just sick). Bart's itch to get his paws on that comic is intense, but at this stage it's also pure, fuelled by the thrill of owning such a vital component of Radioactive Man history and by the curiosity of getting to experience how his hero's journey began. We can practically taste his frantic sincerity, and he has our sympathies. His first and most obvious recourse is make an appeal the bank of Mom and Dad, but Homer refuses to believe that a comic book could be worth that kind of money. Marge suggests that Bart might look into getting a part-time job, and refers him to an acquaintance named Mrs Glick, an elderly widow (how elderly is never specified, but she had a brother who served in World War I, which potentially puts her in her 90s, possibly older) with no shortage of gruelling chores she needs a hand with. Unfortunately, Glick transpires to be incredibly stingy, awarding Bart with only two quarters for days of work. After various ill-fated attempts at raising up funds (the most lucrative of which is selling cans of beer for nickels from his front lawn, for which he narrowly escapes a reprimanding from Lou and Eddie by offering them his unsold wares) he ends up only five dollars richer than he was before.
What's particularly canny about the middle act of "Three Men" is the way it touches on two sore spots at once. It's a harrowing reminder of how unfair life felt when, as a child, you fervently wanted something that was always outside of your reach. But there's also the insinuation that Bart's money-making endeavours, most notably his manual work for Mrs Glick, represent an induction into the world of adult responsibility, with all of its own hardships and shortages of gratification. When Bart returns home from his ordeal with Glick and churlishly declares that employment is for chumps, Homer is full of admiration for him for having twigged that basic truth so early in life. This overlapping of childhood and adult anxieties is playfully foregrounded in what might be one of the most strangely implemented cultural references of the early seasons, a parody of The Wonder Years that facilitates a guest appearance from Daniel Stern (aka Marv, the drippier half of the Wet Bandits) as Bart's inner monologue. Ostensibly, Stern's voice represents that of an adult Bart, looking back fondly upon his youth and identifying the moment he was tasked with finding a job as a crucial turning point in his coming of age, only for Homer to keep cutting him off in the present by demanding to know what Bart (his gaze turned contemplatively toward the camera) is staring at. It's hilarious, but it's also a little baffling in terms of what we're meant to assume is going on within context. Is Bart actually having a fourth wall-breaking moment that his father isn't privy to, enabling him to share some kind of mental connection with his future self (circa 2011) and to communicate with the viewer? Or is the implication that Bart is actively playing at being in The Wonder Years, imagining a narration on behalf of his older self in the style of Kevin Arnold? Alternatively, is he just staring vacantly into space, with Stern's narration teasing us into supposing that something meaningful is transpiring, and Homer repeatedly exposing it for the nonsense that is? Who can say? Even if you're unfamiliar with The Wonder Years, the gag itself remains basically accessible - Stern's narration purports to recontextualise Bart's predicament as the stuff of cozy nostalgia, but this is adamantly shot down by Homer, who represents the voice of a bitter reality. Bart is denied that transcendence, the assurance that his challenges in the present are in fact building toward something far greater, while the supposed future Bart is denied his rose-tinted comforts. The presence of "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by The Byrds, which was featured in the premier episode of The Wonder Years, and which doesn't exactly scream nostalgia for the early 90s, leaves Bart all the more stranded outside of any sense of coherent time.
In addition to offering an affectionate look-back at the qualities that make childhood such a slow and aggravating period (and adulthood likewise), "Three Men" is an elegant exercise in the show's continued world-enriching, managing to pack an impressive amount of development into its 22 minutes. The most obvious thing it has going on in that regard is the aforementioned introduction of Comic Book Guy, a character who'd gain notoriety later down the road when he became an avatar for the obsessive netizens whose pedantic critiquing of The Simpsons did not go unnoticed by the production staff. For now, he's merely a caricature of the kinds of contemptuous, emotionally aloof and self-important nerds who regularly pop up behind the counters of comic book stores. A very inspired and well-observed caricature it is too, holding as true in the UK as it does in the US - there was a time when you could walk into any Forbidden Planet around here and nine times out of ten you'd be served by someone redolent of Comic Book Guy. (If I'm honest, there's a level on which I even have to sympathise with him, at least in his specific lament, "I do not need this, I've got a Masters degree in Folklore and Mythology". Yeah, I too know the sting of having a Masters that nets you absolutely zero prestige in the real world.) This is also our first close-up look at Radioactive Man, who serves as an all-purpose parody of classic comic book superheroes, in the same way that Itchy & Scratchy serve as all-purpose parodies of golden age cartoons (he's also an expansion of a gag played more saliently with Krusty, in that if you peer past his outer disguise he bears a spooky resemblance to Homer). In spite of the obvious affection the show's staff have for comic book culture, on the basis of this episode alone, he'd end up being curiously under-utilised as a concept - sure, he would eventually get another spotlight episode in Season 7, this one actually titled "Radioactive Man", and his comics would pop up in every so often in the mise-en-scenes, but he didn't exactly become an omnipresent staple of the Simpsons universe a la Itchy & Scratchy. Here, we get a glimpse into his superheroic origins, when the atomic blast that improbably failed to kill him gave him radioactive powers, and we learn something of the darker mythology surrounding names attached to the 1950s television adaptation (there's Dirk Richter, whose murky demise alludes to that of Superman actor George Reeves, and Buddy Hodges, who was erroneously rumored to have been killed in Vietnam), but if you wanted to learn more about Radioactive Man lore then you largely had to settle for the interpretations in the Simpsons Comics. Speaking of things that were a bigger deal in auxiliary Simpsons media, I think this is the only canon appearance of Bartman, Bart's superhero alter ego. In his case, it's actually hilarious how much mileage the comics, video games and merchandise were able to mine out of the concept, when it barely fits in with the series proper at all. Within context, "Bartman" is a made-up superhero Bart dresses as in a failed attempt to gain discount entry into the convention, and that's as far as his story goes, although he does a get a pretty sweet transformation sequence out of the deal (complete with yet another Superman allusion when Bart jumps into a telephone booth occupied by journalist Dave Shutton). Also, Lisa's observation, "Too bad we didn't come dressed as popular cartoon characters", is a thing of low-key beauty in itself.
Elsewhere, we get a dark origin story for Patty and Selma, at least as we know them, with the revelation that they once had soft, feminine voices before they took up smoking in their teens and their vocal chords were warped beyond recognition (having covered "Lisa The Beauty Queen" last month, something that leaps out to me about these early Simpsons episodes is how preoccupied the writers were with the topic of cigarettes and their dubious marketing practices - from what we see of the Dirk Richter Radioactive Man series, it's also little more than a stealth Laramie commercial designed to make smoking seem appealing to kids). Marge has only a small role in "Three Men", but she gets an illuminating flashback recounting how she once agreed to become Patty and Selma's slave in exchange for a cut of their allowance, so as to fulfil her dream of owning a child-sized electric lightbulb oven. The story isn't a total bummer, given that Patty and Selma kept their side of the bargain and Marge did eventually get what she wanted, although the twins' newfound nicotine dependency perhaps isn't the only toxic pattern we see being ingrained in this sequence. Wanting to please and take care of the ones she's close to is something that comes completely naturally to Marge (having acquired her swanky new toy, she delights in using it to prepare lightbulb-warmed cookies for her sisters), much as taking advantage of that instinct comes entirely naturally to the ones she's close to. Arguably, there isn't such a massive gulf between her having to cater to the awkward demands of the teenaged Patty and Selma and her having to cater to the equally awkward demands of her family now, with the latter being all the more thankless for not coming with the promise of a lightbulb oven at the end.
The biggest curiosity of the episode has to be the character of Mrs Glick, who feels as though she was being set up to become yet another recurring member of Springfield's ever-growing community, but whose appearances since have been few and far between (although plentiful enough for her to have been killed off at least twice). One would assume that the decision for her to be voiced by a guest performer, the legendary Cloris Leachman, limited what the writers subsequently felt able to do with her. Certainly, Leachman brought a unique energy to the eccentric old biddy, which they were never quite able to replicate later on - off the top of my head, I remember Glick having a cameo in "Two Bad Neighbors" of Season 7, where Tress MacNeille had taken over vocal duties, and where her voice and characterisation seemed indistinguishable from that of Agnes Skinner (angry and kind of screwy). Leachman's Glick has a faintly sinister side (according to the commentary, she was loosely inspired by Miss Haversham from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, in particular the detail about her wedding dress becoming her mourning dress). She won't take no for an answer when it comes to her stashes of hard ribbon candy, and she seems a little too eager to tip concentrated iodine onto Bart's gardening/cat scratch wounds, in spite of the agony it audibly causes him. Still, she doesn't come off as a wilfully mean character, more oblivious and out of touch with the modern world (though not to the extent that she isn't turned on by its filthy soap operas). Unless she's royally trolling Bart when she hands him his two quarters (which I'm not completely ruling out), she seems genuinely impervious to both her own tight-fistedness and to Bart's bruised indignation (and it is hilarious how she manages to lure out a thank you out of him, quite against his intentions). "Three Men" might be where her role within the Simpsons chronology peaked, but she certainly gives it her all, dominating the second act and coming within a hair's breadth of stealing the entire show.
Ultimately, the big attraction turns out to be the grasping chemistry between Bart, Milhouse and Martin, once Bart has to reckon with the fact that he's not the only desperate young soul out there with his eye on the prize. Martin has also been undertaking a one-man crusade to make the comic his own, and Bart spots him in The Android's Dungeon making a gutsy last ditch effort at haggling with Comic Book Guy. His attempts at accumulating funds (which have included visiting his aunt in the nursing home and fishing coins out of the sewer) have been marginally more successful than Bart's - he has 40 dollars, and he's already at his breaking point. Then Milhouse strolls in with 30 dollars in hand, intending to pick up a completely different artefact of a bygone era - a Carl Yastrzemski Topps from 1973, back when he had those mutton chop sideburns - and it dawns on Bart that if they pooled all of their resources together, they would have enough to buy the comic as a group. Unfortunately, as Comic Book Guy is inexplicably elated to point out, they might have bought more than they bargained for, since they now have to deal with the problem of joint custody (a point he accentuates by immediately closing up his store, illustrating how there's no going back).
It is somewhat surprising to note that "Three Men and A Comic Book" was Milhouse's first major story role, considering that he'd been at Bart's side since before the series proper was even underway, debuting in the first of the Simpsons-Butterfinger collaborations ("I don't have the Butterfinger group!"). By contrast, Martin had already had at least three prior turns in the spotlight (in "Bart The Genius" , "Bart Gets an F" and the subplot of "Lisa's Substitute"), with all of those episodes highlighting what made him Bart's polar opposite (or "natural enemy", in his own words) so it's refreshing to see "Three Men" establishing some common ground in their shared love of Radioactive Man. In the beginning, Martin stood out as one of the show's most domineering presences (in part thanks to Russi Taylor's vigorous vocal performances), and while he would have further major roles to come, such as in "Saturdays of Thunder" of Season 3 and "Bart on The Road" of Season 7, there's no denying that that presence receded as the years went on (a side-effect of the writers becoming less interested in Bart's eye-view of the world than in Homer's) and his characterisation was slightly flattened. The joke shifted to his being an effeminate wimp, as opposed to the feisty, intermittently devious poindexter who could go toe to toe with Bart we see here. It is a shame, since I really enjoy the unique dynamic he brings to Bart's friendship circle in "Three Men"; ostensibly, he's the voice of reason, coming up with practical solutions for how they can agree to share, all while being a manipulative bastard underneath. He cunningly assigns the trio days of the week in which they can each claim ownership of the comic, deliberately ordering things so that he'll get to take the comic home first (and also on a Saturday, which is surely the most desirable day to have it). Milhouse, meanwhile, becomes the docile gamma of the trio who's nonetheless cannier than he lets on (he repeatedly challenges Martin on the holes in his system) and also the one who seems most inclined to actually enjoy their purchase as a comic - his efforts to read it for a second time are blocked by Bart and Martin, who've decided that any further handling of its pages are a no-no. And for what? So that it can be entombed with whichever one of them lives the longest, according to Martin. Once an object of innocent excitement and wonder, the comic has become a disturbance in their childhood paradise; the mystique that surrounded it while it was out of reach inevitably fades and gives way to toxicity and leery possessiveness. Sure, isn't that where fandom culture invariably takes us?
I've identified "Three Men" as an anti-coming of age story, in which the lead characters fail to become responsible men who make good on their duty of care for their surrogate baby. At the same time, their third-act clash evolves well beyond the realm of childish squabbling, being more suggestive of some latent savagery from deep within the human psyche, evoking The Treasure of The Sierra Madre (1948) and also Lord of The Flies (Bart addresses a subdued Martin as "Piggy"). When the boys elect to sleep over and keep mutual watch over their trophy, civilisation good as breaks down within their high-up wooden box (comically so, given that they're never far-removed from Marge's microwaved s'mores and whatever mysterious television room Homer is keeping a half-hearted eye on the treehouse from). Bart and Milhouse catch Martin attempting to leave the treehouse to go to the bathroom and insist on binding him to a chair, shortly before coming to physical blows with one another. Milhouse is knocked out of the treehouse, but Bart grabs a hold of his sleeve, just as a gust of wind makes the comic airborne and threatens to blow it into the stormy night. Bart is faced with the final moral choice of whether to prioritise his friend or the comic; Milhouse, meanwhile, gets his stand-out moment, when he ruefully admits that deep down, he never wanted the comic, preferring the mutton chop Yastrzemski card he originally came in for. In the end, Bart decides that their friendship is more valuable than a comic (even a $100 one) and pulls Milhouse to safety, but the universe nevertheless insists on punishing him harshly for his prior twitchiness. It isn't enough for the stray comic to be swept into a muddy puddle and mauled by Santa's Little Helper, it also has to be blasted to pieces by a bolt of lightning, making its destruction feel less like bad luck than some overkill act of divine judgement. Alternatively, you could argue that the bolt of lightning did those kids a favour, since the dratted comic was ultimately nothing but a curse. It didn't have to be, however. Whichever way you slice it, its messy demise is a testament to their squandered potential as care-givers.
"Three Men" risks being a little too on the nose with its moralising, something it slickly circumvents by having the characters reflect on the outcome in a characteristically snide Simpsons fashion, in a way that feels like a direct reversal of the joke at the end of "Bart's Girlfriend" of Season 6. In that episode Bart claims to have learned something but isn't able to articulate what. Here, he's able to articulate the obvious moral takeaway ("We ended up with nothing because the three of us can't share"), but fails to register it as an insight that might inform his decision-making going forward; rather, it's something that just kind of ticks him off. In the peaceful light of dawn we find Bart, Martin and Milhouse attempting the arduous task of recovering and piecing together the comic's remains, but ultimately having to admit defeat and walk away, apparently none the wiser for their experience. And yet there is, as Martin suggests, a kind of natural order to this final arrangement ("Another comic book has returned to the Earth from whence it came"), even if the kids themselves remain largely oblivious. Their precious comic isn't actually dead - rather than being zapped into oblivion, it exists in an abundance of scattered fragments that are being reclaimed by nature in what amounts to an essential part of the healing process, with Mother Earth succeeding where her human offshoots have failed. At the end, we see that shreds of its pages have been collected by a bird (more specifically a dove, in a transparent bit of symbolism) and woven into its nest; the comic thus becomes a valuable investment in the future after all, by providing the basic materials for the nurturing of life. The final word goes to Radioactive Man himself, who closes the episode on a poetic note, by musing that the world is safe again - "but...for how long?". He anticipates both the fragility of the equilibrium, and the lessons that will inevitably need dispensing countless times over.
