The Creator of ‘The Goldbergs’ Is Making Insane ‘Three Stooges’ Comics

Most classic comedy teams stopped producing content once all the members were dead. Like, there are no new movies starring CGI recreations of Abbott and Costello, and nobody wants to see Laurel and Hardy added into Fortnite.

But for some reason, The Three Stooges franchise has stubbornly persisted throughout the years, even long after the last Stooge shuffled off this mortal coil. There was the 2012 Three Stooges movie directed by the Farrelly Brothers, an assortment of Stooge-themed video games and the 1970s Saturday morning cartoon show in which the Three Stooges are turned into cyborg superheroes for some reason.

Now the iconic characters/deceased human beings are starring in a new line of comics from American Mythology Comic Books. Celebrating the Stooges’ centennial, the comics include a more traditional Three Stooges series as well as a reboot of The Robonic Stooges, which hopefully delves into the trio’s Robocop-esque existential angst. 

But most bizarrely, Adam F. Goldberg, the creator of The Goldbergs, decided to combine the slapstick world of Three Stooges with… cosmic horror? Goldberg penned a truly idiosyncratic comic entitled The Three Stooges vs. Cthulhu.

The comic, co-written by Hans Rodionoff with art by Diego Tapie, finds Moe, Larry and Curly reawakening Cthulhu, the ancient monster created by H.P. Lovecraft. Seems like a pretty epic storyline for characters who are normally just tasked with painting someone’s house or hanging out with Snow White. 

The comic format also allows the violence to escalate way beyond what we saw in the original Three Stooges movies. For example, instead of just taking the odd slap to the face or poke to the eye, Curly gets his arm ripped off! Without spoiling too much, this isn’t the last limb he loses in the story, either.

Eventually, the Stooges seek the help of legendary author/racist dipshit H.P. Lovecraft. Just to reiterate, this is a story in which the Three Stooges and a sword-wielding H.P. Lovecraft battle oceanic monsters.

While deeply odd, there is something undeniably delightful about this comic. And to be totally fair to The Three Stooges vs. Cthulhu, it’s far from the only unhinged Three Stooges comic. There is a long history of wacky comics in which Moe, Larry and Curly go on baffling adventures — like the one in which they inadvertently end up driving a car powered by a stolen atomic bomb.

Then there was the Little Stooges series of comic books from the 1970s, which followed the exploits of the “wild, wacky sons of the Three Stooges” who look exactly like their dads, but with shaggy hair, bell-bottoms and the palpable fear that they could be shipped off to Vietnam at any moment.

Sadly, though, it seems as though Shemp was never invited to play with weapons of mass destruction, battle Eldritch Gods or father a hippie.

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