The Damned is back. Gloriously so. Brian Hurtt art. Gangsters and demons. Who cares if it’s good–it’s good, but when you see a double-page spread of Eddie’s club and it reminds of Casablanca all of a sudden, you know Hurtt’s enough to get it over any of the hurdles. And, really, the only hurdle is Cullen Bunn’s too talky narration. There’s lots and lots of it–which makes sense for the first issue of a relaunch–but it still gets tiring, sensical or not. The plotting’s good, the characters are good, the art’s wonderful. It’s so nice to have Damned back. I didn’t even realize how much I missed it.
CREDITS
Ill-Gotten, Chapter 1; writer, Cullen Bunn; artist, Brian Hurtt; colorist, Bill Crabtree; letterer, Chris Crank; editor, Charlie Chu; publisher, Oni Press.
Given “The Banana Splits” were a thing in the late sixties, some dated references in Suicide Squad/The Banana Splits Special might make sense. But writer Tony Bedard doesn’t go for sixties or seventies jokes; instead, it’s mid-nineties racial jokes. The Banana Splits reinventing themselves gangsta rap is far less problematic than when the cops are shooting at them because cops don’t care about “Animal Americans.” The editors of the book, who work on the far better Hanna-Barbera books, clearly don’t bring anything to those better books if they let that kind of crud through. Otherwise, it’s lame with mild amusements. Harley Quinn and the Elephant are cute. Ditto Killer Croc and the monkey (almost). Ben Caldwell and Mark Morales’s art is fine, but it’s not like it needs to do much.
Booster Gold meets The Flintstones. Then there’s a Jetsons backup. Both are fairly rank, though Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti try to infuse Jetsons with the political subtext Mark Russell usually brings to Flintstones. He doesn’t in the feature though. He just has Booster Gold be an idiot because Booster Gold is an idiot. It’s sort of the comic one would’ve expected from a Hanna-Barbera imprint at DC… unlike the actual Russell Flintstones comic.
It’s a great issue. The Flintstones’ housewares are in crisis because there’s a new bowling ball, there’s a new bowling ball because Fred got fired, Fred got fired because Mr. Slate found a new, pro-capitalism god. Russell finds the right balance between humor, social commentary, and Stone Age sitcom revisionism; Pugh’s art is, as always, pure delight.