This was not the Reese’s peanut butter cup of riffing I had hoped for.
Creative Staff:
Story: Harold Buchholz, Joel Hodgson, Matt McGinnis, Seth Robinson, Sharyl Volpe, and Mary Robinson
Art: (Host Segments) Todd Nauck; (In-Comics) Mike Manley
Colors: Wes Dzioba and Mike Manley
Letters: Michael Heisler
What They Say:
The riffing hilarity of Mystery Science Theater 3000 comes to comics when Kinga Forrester pairs her Kingachrome Liquid Medium with her latest invention–the Bubbulat-R! Jonah Heston, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo find themselves thrust into the 2-D world of public domain comics, with riffing as their only defense!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I really wanted to like this. In fact, I fully expected to enjoy the hell out of this comic. I mean, comics and Mystery Science Theater 3000? If they had found a way to deliver each issue with a free Coke, that would have been a trifecta of Dr. J’s favorite things. Or, to put it another way, this could have been the Reese’s peanut butter cup of genre smashing: two great things that are even better today.
Well, that’s why we have the scientific process. Just because a hypothesis looks sound, doesn’t mean that it actually will pay off. That’s what happened here.
Kinga Forrester, in her never-ending quest to dominate media in all its forms, has retooled her proprietary Kingachrome ™ Liquid Medium to work with comic books. Her Bubbulat-R allows individuals to actually enter comic books as both a character and a commentator through the use of—well, it would take a scientist to explain. It just works, okay?
After testing it on Max (TV’s Son of TV’s Frank), she then traps Jonah, Crow, Tom Servo, Gypsy, M. Waverly, and Growler in the comic Johnny Jason, Teen Reporter. Tom, much to his delight, becomes the titular hero, while Gypsy, Growler, and M. Waverly float around as free-form riffers.
In the comic, Tom Servo, Teen Reporter, is assigned the story of Shelley Marks, an actress who survived a kidnapping attempt. Some believe she staged the attempt as a publicity stunt, and Tom’s editor wants him to uncover the truth, and to also get some pics of that showboating Spider-Man.
Tom sets off to Shelley’s ranch to uncover the truth. While there, he gets overwhelmed by her family, who invites him to stay the entire weekend. Considering Shelley is pretty fine, he’s cool with this. Others, however, are not so cool, especially the ranchhand who looks vaguely French. Shelley takes Tom riding, and the ranchhand puts a burr under the saddle of Tom’s horse. Tom handles himself pretty well, and impresses Shelley. The story then devolves into a teen party. Kinga and Max Bubbulate themselves into the story to set up the in-product advertising for Totino’s pizza rolls (man, I miss those), and use Tom’s head for a snack bowl, and that’s pretty much it.
Just like the TV show, the success of this comic rests on two factors: the strength of the story that’s being riffed, and the strength of the riffing. There are some episodes out there, especially the early ones, where the riffing was so-so, but the movie was enjoyable. Sometimes the opposite happens where the movie is pretty awful, but the riffing is great. The best episodes, in my opinion, are the ones where the movies and the riffing are both strong. This is why some of my favorites are the Sci-Fi era Universal movies they riffed.
Unfortunately, the story and the riffs both fall flat in this comic. The story, so far, is pretty nonsensical, and the riffs often feel forced. In fact, the dialogue riffs were confusing at first. It took me a few pages to understand that the dialogue balloons with a small circle on their border were parenthetical riffs and not part of the actual dialogue. Understanding that helped the story make more sense, but it didn’t help the riffs much.
The art is quite good, though. Todd Nauck handles the “host segment” art, and he has a fun style that captures the actors’ likeness well. He also peppers fun little visual gags, such as Crow building Sauron’s tower, complete with eye, out of toothpicks (also a nice callback to Joel’s toothpick sculpture in Mitchell).
Mike Manley handles the “in comic” art and does a great job of replicating the overall style of comics from the ‘40s and ‘50s. Manley shares coloring duties with Wes Dzioba, and they both deserve special recognition for the way they replicate the duller color-scheme, cross-hatching, and general look of the paper quality of comics from that time period. It helps create verisimilitude and sells the idea that Tom and the rest are there in an old comic.
In Summary:
While the art is great, the writing is the reason why Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Comic doesn’t work. Again, the story doesn’t engage the reader and the riffs just aren’t that funny. To be fair, this could be due to the concept not translating well to another medium. Comedy is a fragile thing, dependent upon timing, inflection, and even volume. There are countless examples of jokes in the TV show that work simply because they hit just at the right moment, or the actor affects a funny accent, such as Crow’s killer Gregory Peck, or the new crew’s impression of Doug McClure. Timing functions differently in comics, and it could also be that the letterer just doesn’t have the skill to pull it off (to be fair, I’m not sure any letterer could). Whatever the reason, this was a disappointing inaugural issue. Believe me, this breaks my heart. I’ve been a member of the Info Club since I was thirteen (still have my card, in fact!). Dr. J gives this a…
Grade: C-
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: 12 September 2018
MSRP: $3.99