Reviewer: Kevin S. Mahoney
Title: Christmas Time Warp/My Dinner with Doom(bots)!/Frankie, My Dear…/
Now You See Me
Stories by: Chris Eliopoulos & Marc Sumerak
Script by: Marc Sumerak
Art and Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Color: Gurihiru
Editor: Mackenzie Cadenhead
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Culture is a pliable, mutable, perishable thing. Things that are popular today may be obsolete or quaint tomorrow. Yesterday’s cool widgets are often today’s laughable junk. There are very few true classics in any culture; artistic styles run in and out of fashion from season to season and year to year. This is true in comics as well as any other medium.
One thing that has run further and further out of fashion until recently is the humor comic. The nineteen nineties all but abolished this sort of storytelling. Other than perhaps the Punisher/Archie crossover, and the occasional event parody, (lampooning Marvel’s Infinity Gauntlet storyline for example) humorous books seemed to be dying out. What If? and What the ?! both bit the dust in the nineties. Children’s comics (where humor is more important and far more prevalent) were no longer even sold in the same stores as more standard long johns titles! Action and drama became the rule, and humor relegated to the occasional on-panel in-joke or reference.
Thank heavens the nineties are OVER! The last few years have seen a serious resurgence in comics that encourage laughter for laughter’s sake, and it has been a breath of fresh air for the entire industry. The resurgence of characters (and comics featuring) She-Hulk, the Great Lakes Avengers, and even the release of Frank Cho’s Liberty Meadows in typical comics issue format have shown the buying public at large that a chuckle might be worth their hard-earn dollar. Combine the genuine humor of those books with their ability to appeal to audiences of all ages, and there is even more hope for the future of comics. More fans will eventually mean more people interested in writing and drawing comics. And new blood is the best thing any artistic field can obtain if it hopes to stave off stagnation.
Which brings the public at large to the works of Eliopoulos, Sumerak, Gurihiru, et al? Is it funny? Yes. Is it heart-warming and absolutely kid-friendly? Indeed. Does the art surge past the amateurish and vault squarely into the realm of caricature and frothy cartoon? You betcha. This installment of the Franklin Richards saga is at least as entertaining as the previous issue, and that was no slouch in either art or writing.
If there are any qualms to be found, they are fanboyish ones. Katie Power (of I suspect Power Pack) is used in this issue as Franklin’s female foil and no mention is made of her super powers! Not that everyone in the Marvel Universe needs to display their superhuman skills in every appearance, but it seemed an obvious comedic avenue that Eliopoulos and Sumerak skipped over in favor of a more pedestrian dynamic. The similarity in MacGuffins between these stories and those of other series and cartoons (Calvin and Hobbes, Disney’s Ducktales) is readily obvious to readers of sufficient years. In the book’s defense, certain riffs featured in this installment were used by Mark Twain decades ago; the devices used here have certainly stood the test of time and are therefore more likely worth revisiting. The pitch-perfect use of Franklin’s adult contemporaries (his parents and uncles) certainly diverts this sequence of plots from any other canon.
