I LOVE watching The Simpsons and still laugh at episodes I've seen several times before, so when the Evening Press asked me to review these books by Simpsons creator Matt Groening, I could hardly wait to pick them up.

But there's a slight problem. When is new really new? These books are compilations of Groening's old news-paper cartoon strips from 20 years ago.

The speed and verve of the humour that hallmarks The Simpsons is almost completely missing in these intricate, but amateurish, cartoon strips with mile upon mile of annoyingly small, handwritten captions.

I thought the humour was self-indulgent and the drawings laboured. Each cartoon must have taken hours to do but, having said that, they do seem like the work of someone with plenty of hours to spare.

The value of these books, to me, is that they give a real insight into Groening's amazing, but often surprisingly childish, mind. You can see the embryonic Simpsons characters developing, but overall they look like pages collected from an art student's notebooks or university rag mags.

So, would I recommend these books to you? Well, originally I wasn't going to - but that was before I lent them to some friends' teenage children. They thought they were really cool and won't let me have them back. I must be getting old!

Updated: 08:48 Wednesday, March 17, 2004