So, what's up with the Heckler?

So, the other day Dale asked me what's the deal with the Heckler, since I've gone on and on about him mentioned him before here and there. The short answer would be (too late) a Keith Giffen comic from 1992 which he's said he wrote "as if Bugs Bunny were a super-hero." (Don't ask where he said that...I thought the write-up at CBR's Comics You Should Own mentioned it, but maybe not.)

It's a weird, fun, funny series; which is also pretty densely packed since Giffen generally sticks to the nine-panel grid he'd been using for quite some time, like in Legion of Super-Heroes. His collaborators from Legion, Tom and Mary Bierbaum, join him here as well. And I just love the idea of some guy in the DCU's weirdest town, just up and deciding he needs to put on a costume to fight crime and protect the citizens; despite having no powers, no training, and no readily apparent skills except maybe an extraordinary ability to mouth off.

I was going to say I like the idea of the Heckler more than the actual execution, but after re-reading those issues, I like them quite a bit as well. Sadly, he hasn't made a lot of appearances since his book...almost twenty years ago, good lord. I hear he makes a cameo in Patton Oswalt's JLA: Welcome to the Working Week, but I've never seen it. Still, if Go Native Toys ever gets around to a six-inch Blanx figure, I'm definitely painting one into the Heckler. Those HA's are going to be murder...

Scans from Heckler #4, "Let Them Make Up Their Own Stupid Title!" Plot and pencils by Keith Giffen, inks by Bob Lewis, script by Tom and Mary Bierbaum. (Fan club from issue #3, inks by Malcolm Jones III.)



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Today: the Horder! I mean, Heckler, Heckler. Sorry.

The worst thing about this? I had the whole six-issue run of the Heckler at one point, and haven't the foggiest what happened to it. Well, that's not the worst thing: I keep only finding #1 and buying it...hell, I may have a couple more somewhere. And it's not like Bruce Jone's Warlord #10, a book that I own a substantial amount of its print run, in order to keep it out of the hands of the innocent; Heckler #1 isn't bad.

Aw, I miss the nine-panel grids...I recall co-creator/plotter/penciller Keith Giffen staying he wrote the Heckler as if Bugs Bunny was a superhero; but it's better than that, really.

I don't know if this book is fondly remembered by anyone except me. The plot is a skeleton to hang jokes on, and the jokes are not going to be for everyone, and even then they're hit and miss. Moreover, the Heckler's civilian identity is a cypher and he doesn't seem to have a traditional origin at all; or any real reason to put on a suit and fight crazy villains. (More bizarre-crazy, than psycho-crazy.) And if you're going to do a book in 1992, that's a bit of a rebuttal to the tastes of 1992; good luck, comics were just about tasteless there for a while. All gritted teeth and pouches...

That said, love it. You might not, but if it grabs you, the Heckler will make you want to put on a costume and run around town; with no powers, no training, and no motivation. I'd be a natural.

Still: every time I see this book in the quarter bins, I buy it. If I get six copies of issue #1 before I find the rest of the series...I don't know, I owe you a coke or something.

From "Our First Issue!" Script by Tom and Mary Bierbaum, inks by Malcolm Jones III, letters by Bob Pinaha, colors by Tom McGraw, inks by Kevin Dooley, and the rest by Keith Giffen.

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