Green Eggs and Ham Take a Hike | Review

Green Eggs and Ham Take a Hike
Writer/artist: James Kochalka
RH Graphic; $10.99

The first two books in RH Graphic and Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ new-ish line of original graphic novels based on Seuss’ books starred his best-known characters, chaos agent (and Seuss mascot) The Cat in the Hat and Christmas-stealing grouch The Grinch. The third book in the line goes a different, unexpected route, not starring another prominent character like The Lorax or Horton, but Green Eggs and Ham‘s Sam-I-Am and the other guy from that book, the big one with the top hat who insisted he did not like the titular dish.

Green Eggs and Ham Take a Hike thus has a far greater challenge than the previous comics, lacking a strong character to anchor it, one whose attributes can drive the action. Indeed, Seuss’ original, 1960 book was more about rhyming wordplay than anything else, that wordplay dictating other elements of the book (Like, for example, Sam-I-Am’s curious name, which only makes sense in how it sounds along with the words “Green Eggs and Ham”).

If anyone is up to such a challenge, though, it’s cartoonist James Kochalka. In the prolific cartoonist’s 30-year career, he has created all kinds of comics for different audiences but has plenty of comics for kids on his resume, including such series as Johnny Boo, Banana Fox, Dragon Puncher, Glork Patrol and Glorkian Warrior.

If there’s a commonality running through all of those works, it is a sense of unrestrained silliness, which seems almost a prerequisite for a book extrapolated from one of Seuss’ sillier classics, featuring barely defined characters locked in a bizarre conflict. Kochalka thus manages what seems like a rather effortless, almost random story that filters Seuss’ classic designs into his own simplified, stripped-down style, the book reading more like a Kochalka comic than a Seuss story.

This has been a virtue of the series so far, with the various creators working in their own art and storytelling styles, rather than trying to ape Seuss, although for any reader who grew up reading Seuss—which, of course, is just about every reader—this can lead to a bit of cognitive dissonance, seeing the characters talk, for example, in dialogue that doesn’t rhyme (Kochalka does open the story with a couple of jokes about rhyming told in rhyme, though).

That dissonance is more pronounced here than in the earlier comics, given that the characters are such relatively undefined ciphers, and the rhymes were pretty much the point of their original book.

The unnamed character from Green Eggs and Ham his here given a name, Walter Plot, and he’s busily playing video games one beautiful day when Sam-I-Am appears in his window, holding a plate of green eggs and ham aloft and proposing that they go for a picnic to eat the dish together.

This involves going on a hike to the perfect picnic spot, however, and Walter is reluctant to do so, not liking dirt or bugs, and pretty sure he doesn’t like hiking, either. This, at least, keeps the two characters’ original dynamic from their original book intact, with Sam-I-Am insisting Walter try something, while he continually protests (although, it’s worth noting, his protestations are not as wild, varied or dramatic, and thus not as funny, as those in Seuss’ book).

Sam-I-Am doesn’t make it easier, either, having picked the top of a giant mountain as the best place for their picnic. The resolution of their conflict is also similar to their first one, with Walter ultimately happy he went along with Sam-I-Am.

It’s hard to guess how younger Seuss readers will react to this extrapolation, which sounds and reads so differently than its inspiration, or if they will even recognize the characters as those of the book once they’ve been Kochalka-ized.

I assume that it is adult readers who will be most likely to pick up on the differences, though, while younger readers—whether they are being read to or reading it themselves—will be charmed by the same virtues apparent in so much of Kochalka’s work: The cute art and the weird, silly, almost stream-of-conscious story.

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