Kid 'N' Play, Issue #1 (review)

It occured to us that our Comic Book Section section has been neglected so we decided to go into the vast Fish And Spaghetti library.

Because we're so proud of the Fish And Spaghetti library, we were certain that any book we grabbed would be a gem so we agreed to blindly grab the first thing we saw and review it for you.

Unfortunately we grabbed Marvel Comics' Kid 'N' Play, Issue 1.


If you are old enough to remember who Kid 'N' Play are were, a full spectrum of feelings will pour over you when you think of them. From joyful nostalgia (Hey, remember Kid ‘N’ Play!), to confusion, empathy and pitty (Hey, what the hell ever happened to Kid ‘N’ Play?). Seriously.

Kid 'N' Play weren’t just some popular rap duo from the late 80’s, they were a huge multimedia force way before Will Smith.

Within 5 years they had 3 albums, several movies, a cartoon and (obviously) a comic book. And that’s where the confusion comes in. What the hell happened to them? According to the internet in general, they broke up in 1993, 3 years after House Party was released. The idea of a group enjoying success like that only to break up soon after is mind boggling, especially when you consider that they not only spanned genres but demographics as well.


Think about it: A sanitary, bubble-gum-pop-rap group follows up their music success with a successful and very “Rated R” Hip Hop movie full of cussing and sexual references and a subplot about racial profiling nestled between a scene where Kid has to distract his cell mates with his rapping skills to keep them from raping him and a scene where he has to pass up on the chance to get laid because his condom had expired.

That movie spawned several dismal sequels but helped launch the careers of Tisha Campbell, Martin Lawrence, and film Director, comic book writer and former head of BET, Reginald Hudlin.

Another Kid ‘N’ Play movie, the identity-swap farce, “Class Act” followed as did the cartoon and comic book.

So if you’re keeping track at home it goes like this:

wild success with pop rap suitable for the masses, followed by an adult film that helped launch the careers of power players in the film, comedy, TV and Comic Book industry, then more movies for adults, then cartoons and a short lived comic book for kids followed by more (albeit horrible, God awful) movies (The House Party sequels are too bad to review, even mockingly), then a flop of an album, and then they vanished off the face of the earth.

The actually comic book is as baffling as their story, so we'll make this quick:



Ok, it starts out with Kid ‘N’ Play being chased by a group of thugs because Play tried to holla at one of their girlfriends.

They end up getting yanked out of the trash can they hid in and then beaten up so bad that when they regain consciousness they find that they’re tied together and dangling upside down from a tall building. Seriously.

Then they’re rescued by two racist cops and taken to the police station where they’re picked up and grounded by their parents.

After, they decide to take a martial arts class with Grand Master “Dragon Foot” Gorger who makes them sign some kind of injury liability waver because he doesn’t actually plan on training them, he’s really a maniac who plans to make them fight robots for his own amusement.

No Bullshit.

The most interesting thing about the book (more than them dangling from a building, the racist comic book cops, and the fighting robots) is the cover, which our team of scientist believe may also shed some light on the whole tragedy that is the vanishing of the Kid ‘N’ Play conglomerate.

If you look carefully, you'll see that THEY, on the cover, are reading the book that WE are actually reading.

This may be a subliminal clue that supports the idea that time travel was involved in the downfall of Kid 'N' Play, and yes, time travel is the most logical explanation for their plummet from super stardom that we've been able to come up with.

One theory we’re working on in the Fish And Spaghetti Lab goes like this:

In an alternate time line, after the success of their movies, music and comic books, Kid ‘N’ Play become multimedia moguls and eventual billionaire tastemakers for an entire generation, they have the proportionate power ranking of Russell Simmons, Diddy, and Martha Stewart combined.

At the height of their stardom, after a conversation with Oprah, they use their power and influence for good and begin funding programs that cure diseases and provide housing for millions world wide. They eventually decide to commission the building of a time machine to venture into the past for the good of man kind.

However, a miscalculation in their understanding of the predestination paradox causes them to cross paths with their former selves nearly causing a rip in the spacetime continuum leaving us with a alternate reality version of themselves, not super moguls, but shadows of what they should have been.

Anyway, if you see this book, get it. It's usually like a dollar or less if you can find one, the series only lasted 9 issues, so if you really care to, you can probably find the entire series.

Thanks again, Kid ‘N’ Play, you truly were are 2 Hype. 2 Hype, indeed.