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 revisits variants, magic princesses, and new direct-to-video features.
Last week I was writing about the latest batch of Marvel and DC variant covers, (see "
Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--A Moon, A Girl, A Dinosaur"), but somehow I neglected to mention that in October Marvel would be giving us a month of giant monster variant covers. What was particularly egregious about this omission is I'm the guy always finding new ways to criticize Marvel for underutilizing their stable of Lee/Kirby kaiju. I'm still not what you'd call crazy about variant covers, but I've got to admit so far I've liked what I've seen of these…
Given the number of times I've written about magic princesses this year (see "
Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Magic Princess Time"), I'd really be remiss if I didn't mention that the first issue of Dark Horse Comics'
Zodiac Starforce finally came out. And it's every bit as good as I had expected. Kevin Panetta does a nice job of playing with the tropes of the genre and Paulina Ganucheau's artwork is lovely. But even better is the distinctive and original color scheme. It's been a good long while since I've seen anything remotely like it in American comics.
I know that I’m just an armchair animation aficionado but I do like to delude myself that I know at least a little something about the subject. Yet I keep finding myself getting blindsided by these direct-to-video animation features that seem to come completely out of nowhere. This year alone there was
JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time, then
Tom & Jerry: Spy Quest and now another one has unexpectedly popped up on this week's Netflix New Releases list:
Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run.
It's essentially a less than timely animated version of one of those early 90s action rom-coms where a cute couple meet then spend the rest of the film's running time running. But what makes this feature extra odd is it while the Looney Tunes have once again been redesigned for a new series, the waiting in the wings
Wabbit--A Looney Tunes Production, here they look and behave more or less the way they did on
The Looney Tunes Show… Except here they're all playing different characters; for instance Bugs is a cab driver--which I for one find to be a strangely appropriate profession for the Rabbit to have.
The very best part of
The Looney Tunes Show was the vocal contribution of the always wonderful Kristen Wiig, who helped turn the one-note Lola Bunny into a delightful character. Ms. Wiig's career is apparently too busy these days for her to reprise the role and here she's voiced by Rachel Ramras. Ramras acquits herself nicely, but Wiig's inspired inflections are sorely missed.
Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run isn't half bad, even if the animation does fluctuate from just OK to the subpar. And the story would have worked better if the animators weren't so dead set on attempting to shoehorn in appearances from every conceivable character. The most obscure of which just has to be Giovanni Jones, the built-like-a-professional-wrestler classical music conductor who first appeared in the 1949
Looney Tunes short
Long-Hair. And for those keeping score, like the gophers Mac and Tosh, Giovanni is now coded as gay.
While Warner Bros. has never allowed Mac and Tosh to officially come out, according to Wikipedia Warner Bros. animation director Bob Clampett is on record as saying the gophers were based on gay actors Franklin Pangborn and Edward Everett Horton. Plus the fact that in
Looney Tunes: Rabbit's Run they have a production number titled "Girl, You're Fabulous," a song that's a celebration of self-esteem through makeovers, should probably be taken as some kind of a hint.
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.
