VELCOME

A comic book in picture-book clothing, more akin to MAD magazine than to anything by Sendak, Macaulay, Van Allsburg, or other practicioners of the form. A heavy-lidded, mustachioed host in an armchair, wearing a Steve Martin-style fake arrow through his head, introduces campfire stories and other old chestnuts, for example, about the man who ominously announces his impending visit on the telephone: ""I am the Viper."" Of course, he turns out to be the viper who has come to vash the vindows. A section of bad jokes breaks whatever tension might be in the air: blood-drinking bathroom humor, a lice joke. Most children will have heard it all on the playground, but none of it is worth immortalization in this format. Typeface mania, dialogue balloons, and droll commentary by a dog do not alter the book's low origins and utter lack of originality.