Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett talks about Star vs the Forces of Evil, Riverdale, and DuckTales.
I have to confess that I’m spite of the fact that we now have six solid weeks of Christmas, it still kind of snuck up on me this year. I find myself woefully unprepared. I don’t have any deep observations or Best Of/Top 10 lists of things I love and hate, just a bunch of stray comments. For example:
Back in June (see “Confessions of a Comic Book Guy - You Can’t Argue With Angry”), I wrote about how much I was looking forward to the comic book adaptation of one of my favorite show, the Disney XD series Star Vs. The Forces of Evil. After which I somehow promptly forgot that the comic even existed, that is until I saw #2 had come out. So I hurriedly tracked a copy down and found it to be not just very good but also extremely close to the feel of an episode of the series. Which is not surprising, given it’s written by Zach Marcus, one of the show's storyboard artists and drawn by Devin Taylor, one of its character designers, and published by Joe Books, who have done nothing but produce top-notch Disney titles. If you weren’t aware the comic was coming out at all, it’s understandable, Joe Books has tended to keep a pretty low profile where the direct sales market is concerned. But if there are any retailers who want to give their output a look should go over to Hoopla, the online streaming service which via a free subscription from your local public library, allows you to borrow audiobooks, movies, music, and television shows. A wide selection of their comics and graphic novels are available there, including Star Vs. The Forces of Evil #1.
Just before they let us see the new teaser trailer for the upcoming
Archie adaptation
Riverdale (“‘
Riverdale’ Trailer Reveals Murder”) the CW sent out a poster of the whole gang at Pop’s Chocklit Shoppe underneath which was the legend, “A Great Place To Get Away With It All”. Which, happily, doesn’t appear to be the tagline for the series, though “The Deeper You Go, The Darker The Secrets” is not substantially better. Clearly, the producers are shooting for an adolescent
Twin Peaks, but for me, there’s much more of a creepy
Blue Velvet vibe coming off of it. I showed it to a longtime female Archie reader who declared it “almost like blasphemy, you know?” And while I wouldn’t go that far, I kind of know what she meant.
Actually,
Riverdale reminds me of
Sticks and Bones, an anti-Vietnam War play written by David Rade, a pitch black comedy about a disabled returning serviceman who comes home from the war to that most wholesome of middle-class American families, The Nelsons. Who, for those too young to have experienced them firsthand, were the stars of
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet a radio sitcom turned long-running early TV series about a typical American family. The twist being the leads actually were named Ozzie and Harriet, actually were married to each other and the kids playing their kids were their actual kids. DC Comics published five issues of
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet starting in 1949, For the record, I only know about the play because in 1973 CBS showed a highly controversial (half of its affiliates refused to show it) telemovie version, which given the impact it had on my adolescent mind it was something I clearly wasn’t ready for.
To me, it’s kind of like that, except that instead of using a symbol of wholesomeness to expose the prejudice and bigotry lurking at the heart of America society, Riverdale does it to create enough of a freak factor that’ll draw millennial eyeballs onto what’s essentially just another glossy young-skewing sexy soap. But ultimately the series can only be good for the Archie brand and helpful in raising its profile, hopefully to the point where they’ll finally get an Archie feature film made -- one that’s a little closer to the source material. Still, if the producers really want a long-term success in television I’d suggest they imitate Gotham and tell everyone their series is just one long prologue to Afterlife With Archie and in the last ten minutes of the final episode the dead will rise to devour the living.
When I saw the headline from a Los Angeles Times piece titled “
Watch David Tennant and the new ‘DuckTales’ cast sing the theme song” I honestly thought that it was one of those funny video mash 'em up things that the kids like so much. But no, proper Scotsman and former Doctor David Tennant will actually be the voice of Uncle Scrooge in the new version of the show, and he only tops the talented cast. They’ve gotten comedians/actors Danny Pudi, Ben Schwartz, and Bobby Moynihan to play Huey, Dewey, and Louie, suggesting they might actually have individual, intelligible voices in this incarnation. Playing Webby Vanderquack is the always delightful Kate Micucci of Garfunkel and Oates. Webby was an original character in the first series, created to provide some little girl appeal and just generally be adorably cute so when required by the plot she could ever so slightly warm the heart of crusty old Unca' Scrooge. But from the artwork released for the new
DuckTales shows that this time she’s actually allowed in on the adventures, and is clearly into it. Please note that in this version her signature bow has been saucily placed to one side.
That’s all I have, except to say, as I always like to do, something my late, elderly, foreign-born Aunt once said to be a complete bunch of strangers: Merry Christmas, You People.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
