Another good smurfs graphic novel. It is fun to compare this with the animation that came after, and see how close the stories were. ( )

A fun little nostalgic read for me. As a kid, I loved the cartoon and had a respectable number of the Smurf PVC figures, so when I discovered that Papercutz has been reprinting the original comics, I thought I'd pick up the first volume and have a nice little walk down memory lane. Coming at these stories as an adult, however, some things that I noticed beyond the "cute" factor: Papa Smurf is kind of an ass in these early stories, demanding that the other Smurfs in the village do his bidding at every turn, without question; the purple Smurfs may have been my earliest (altho unknown at the time) experience with zombies - the fact that the regular Smurfs aren't infected until they are bitten and then they in turn become "evil" purple Smurfs is definitely a reflection of the modern idea of the zombie; holy crap they use the word "smurf" a lot in the dialogue in these stories, almost to the point of being obnoxious. I actually found that I still enjoyed the stories, so I'm sure I'll be picking up some more of the volumes as I find them. ( )