You know the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf fairy tale? Prepare to be bored as it gets reimagined - yes, it’s one of those books from the tiresome revisionist fairy tales subgenre - with the roles reversed as the Wolf is being put upon by the Three Little Pigs.
The clever title of this book is one of the few positives about it: BB Wolf and the 3 LPs, meaning the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs, with the Wolf framed as a black blues musician in early 20th century America and the Pigs as oppressive white landowners/industrialists. Wolf and his family are scraping by a pitiful existence on a farm, Wolf occasionally taking to the stage to play the Delta blues, until one day the Pigs try to take his farm away. Failing that, they go even further and take his family from him - revenge time for Wolfy, Pigs!
Beyond the concept though, writer JD Arnold doesn’t really have an interesting story to tell. It’s the basic revenge plot which plays out as you’d expect minus any excitement. He hasn’t got anything to say about the blues which you’d think might play a big part in the book given the title and cover except it doesn’t. I guess he makes the banal point that bluesmen lived rough lifestyles but why say something so unoriginal? Nor has he any comment to make on race relations from that time. Blacks got shit on by whites - yup, I knew that already, seeing the conflict with wolves and pigs doesn’t bring a new perspective to the history so what’s your point?
Even though the book is a little over 80 pages, it feels much, much longer because it’s such a slow, boring read. Rich Koslowski’s black and white pencils were nice and he makes the wolves look really fierce but all that did was make me wonder why the wolves would be oppressed by the soft, weak pigs in the first place when just one wolf could effortlessly cut through a whole bunch of pigs by himself!
BB Wolf and the 3 LPs is another garbage Top Shelf publication, thank god this was the last one I bought on the recent Comixology sale! I wondered why I hadn’t heard of so many of these - now I know: they stink!
BB Wolf and the Three LPs
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