It’s a fundamental rule of comedy that the more seriously people take an absurd situation, the funnier it becomes. Consider Leslie Nielsen flatly insisting he’s never been more serious in his life, and stop calling him Shirley, or Buster Keaton’s stone face. And so it is with this week’s Batman/Elmer Fudd crossover, Batman/Elmer Fudd Special #1 (DC Comics). Yes, Batman fights Elmer Fudd. And it’s even funnier than you might expect.
It works because Tom King’s script and Lee Weeks’ art are absolutely, completely serious. This is a Batman comic in the gritty noir mode, with Elmer Fudd as a small-time hitman out for vengeance. It’s told from Elmer’s perspective, and King’s straight-faced parody of noir prose just gets even funnier because he writes the whole thing with Elmer’s speech impediment. Where King gets clever is that he spots the places where the tropes of Batman comics, noir, and Looney Tunes overlap. This book works as a classic noir, a Looney Tunes story, and a Batman take all at once, and that’s an amazing feat of writing.
Weeks, meanwhile, delivers exactly the kind of rain-soaked, thick-inked world you’d expect from a dimly lit city full of crooks. But he also has a lot of fun reinventing the entire Looney Tunes cast as a bunch of petty violent crooks. Weeks keeps all the Looney Tunes characters recognizable without throwing off the shadowy world he creates or getting too exaggerated. Tweety may be talking about that time he got flashed by a stripper (“I thought I saw a…,” well, you know the rest) but he’s still recognizably Tweety.
Is all this utterly ridiculous? Of course! But that’s what makes it so fun. King and Weeks have turned an incident of “corporate synergy” into a hilarious satire of three different bits of culture at once, and that makes it a truly great book.
Blood Brothers #1, Dynamite
A police procedural told in the world of luchador movies seems like a natural fit. And yet, what Fabian Rangel and Javier Caba put together here has a fresh feel, not least because they smartly ask “What would it take for a guy walking around in a mask body-slamming people to be seen as ‘normal?'” Their answer? Everything in the luchador movies, from Aztec mummies to wolfmen, is real, out in public, and just part of everyday life. It helps that they ground it all in the brothers of the title, a luchador and his drunken Sam Spade-esque brother. Fans of noir or urban fantasy should grab this, luchador fans or not.
Deadpool Vs. The Punisher #5, Marvel
Fred Van Lente and Pere Perez finish off their hilarious miniseries with, well, more hilarity. This miniseries has worked so well to this point because Van Lente and Perez know the main characters so well, and just how to play them off each other, and here they parody the fact that the Punisher is a homicidal maniac, a bit, by contrasting it with Wade Wilson being less a homicidal maniac and more just a guy with shoddy impulse control. Hopefully this isn’t the last time the Merc with a Mouth and the Punisher “team up,” although Wade probably will twig to the whole “getting shot in the head” thing sooner or later.
Black Magick #6, Image Comics
Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott’s story of a witch/cop is back, this time with an issue that explains why Rowan is such a grim character, in some respects. It’s a nice bit of character backstory that, perhaps, we should have seen earlier. But as always, Scott’s detailed pencil work and sparing use of color makes this, by far, one of the most gorgeous books on the stands, and worth reading for that alone.
Secret Weapons #1, Valiant
What if, after years of striving, after seeing your peers obtain world-shaking abilities, after finally entering the process to become a superpowered person yourself, you discovered the power your genetics fated you to have… sucked? That’s the basic thrust of Valiant’s new team book, set in Oklahoma City and following “psiots” abandoned by jerkass overlord Toyota Harada after the collapse of his empire. These kids aren’t having the best time, but they are at least making it work. But somebody is hunting them, so they need to figure out how to fight back, even if their superpower is lame.
Rebels: These Free And Independent States #4, Dark Horse: This take on the War of 1812 takes an unexpected turn, as John Abbott’s autism leads to him being both the hero of a battle and costing him everything he loved.
Jughead #16, Archie: Mark Waid and Ian Flynn hilariously parody Afterlife with Archie while giving a shoutout to Chip Zdarsky’s smart run on this series.
Clue #1, IDW Publishing: Anything called “Clue” has a hell of a legacy to live up to, but Paul Allor and Nelson Daniel pull it off with an entertaining first issue that’s a solid murder mystery in its own right.
Project Superpowers: Hero Killers #2, Dynamite: This dark satire of Silver Age comics is pretty funny in its own right, but the ending twist raises the stakes just enough to make it more than a gag book.
Astro City #45, DC Comics: Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson finally bring the big arc they’ve been hinting at to a head in this issue, which will, once again, make you look at a cast member in a different light.
Paknadel And Trakhanov’s Turncoat, BOOM! Studios ($20, Softcover): SF is full of scenarios where aliens invade and begin running the world. But what happens when the aliens are driven off? That’s what Turncoat explores, in a clever bit of science fiction noir.
Hard Case Crime: Peepland, Titan ($20, Softcover): Christa Faust’s mix of memoir and crime story was one of the best comics of the last few months, and if you missed it, now’s the chance to grab it.
The Complete Chester Gould Dick Tracy, Vol. 22, IDW Publishing ($35, Hardcover): Touching on Dick Tracy’s deeply weird ’60s strips, the real appeal here is the gift for distorted caricature Gould and his art team show.