Yes, a lot of 'jokes' with Daffy's lisp here; first and foremost his inability to get through the automated phone system for customer service at Acme. Predictably enraged, Daffy heads to Acme in person, but finds the building abandoned...and now the new hideout of the Joker, who has just beat a disappointing henchman to death. Caught, Daffy thinks fast, and tells Joker he's from the temp agency, Acme Hench. The Joker seems to buy that, or maybe just wants to see how this plays out.
As the new lead hench, Daffy excels at motivating the other goons and at lair setup, but can't manage to get enough leeway to escape. Worse, the Joker next job was murdering a bunch of conceited billionaires at a fundraiser...in theory, 'worse,' I suppose. Daffy executes the plan to a 't,' with a couple minor errors: he accidentally locked the goons in the van, and may have used sneezing gas instead of laughing gas. Ooh, that's going to look bad on his next performance review, but Batman arrives in time to break the Joker's jaw, since somebody carelessly removed all the lugnuts from the van's tires.
Still, Daffy overhears Gordon and Batman badmouthing ducks and goes off, and since he had been ostensibly leading the raid, it looks bad for him. A nice long stay at Arkham might do him some good! (Batman also misses the Joker's escape in a carjacked food truck earlier: world's greatest detective, my tailfeathers.)
Also this issue: "Silence of the Lame," written by Joey Cavalieri, art by Luciano Vecchio. Commissioner Gordon light the signal, not for Batman, but for the "head head-shrinker" Dr. Daffy Duck. Most of the jokes don't land, except the Joker's secret, of his greatest trick ever: Arkham wasn't so much his cage, as it was his home! He does have a point about his cell being nicer than most prisons' exercise yards...
I kinda thought there would be more callbacks in this; but "shoot me now!" is the only one that jumps out at me. I know there were other team-up issues like this, but I recently read (possibly from the same quarter bin!) Nightwing/Magilla Gorilla, which has a decent plot, a couple touching moments, and a third-string second-banana that goes bad. ("Third-string" is generous; I watch so many cartoons and couldn't have told you if that character was shown as a jerk before!) It was better than this one; although I'm still wondering where Batman/Elmer Fudd ranks.
2 comments:
Oh the dirty places one's mind could go with a title like "The Acrobat's daughter" lol.
I used to be fine with Lobdell's writing, nothing too earth-moving, but acceptable enough, at least while he was writing the X-Men. His Wildc.a.t.s. run was about the same speed/level, but it seems he REALLY devolved in quality during the Phew52 era when he wrote The Teen Titans & Red Hood & Outlaws books.
That reminds me that he initially got his big break in comics because he could work fast, kind of like Bill Mantlo fast. He also used to/tried to be a stand-up comedian & it shows in his work.
Anyhoo, he does a good enough job here with Daffy & the Joker, but it sure does feel as if it could've been a little better.
I do have agree that the Joker does seem to get preferential treatment compared to his other fellow inmates. I guess because he's both the more well-known of his inmates & both also arguably the most dangerous, so maybe the better accommodations are also to help pacify & placate him?
Reminds me of how chomos get to be one of the rare protected classes in prison, despite the fact that they're in there because they've harmed children.
I personally don't like the Batman/Elmer Fudd special, but almost everyone else seems to- it feels like one joke stretched to 32 or however many pages to me.
This one's actually from the second DC/Looney Tunes team-up event they did. There were a few good issues the first time (the Elmer Fudd one's from the first one but, like I said, I didn't care for that one) but none of the second round really worked for me. It's sorta the reverse of the DC/Hanna-Barbera team-up events (two rounds of that too- I think Magilla was from the second)- the second one was stronger than the first to me.
Of those four events, the issues I'd recommend are Bugs Bunny/LOSH, Yosemite Sam/Jonah Hex, Roadrunner/Lobo (all from the first DC/Looney Tunes), and Jabberjaw/Aquaman (from the second DC/Hanna-Barbera). The Looney Tunes ones are all worth a flip-through at least, if for no other reason than seeing DC characters in Looney Tunes style in the back-ups.
Post a Comment