I love it when writers blend humor into super-hero comics. It can provide a nice counterpoint to high-stakes adventure and humanize larger-than-life characters.
Judd Winnick tries rather strenuously to achieve this in Outsiders 15, and the results range from flat to painful. Hence, here’s a completely unnecessary joke-by-joke analysis of the issue. (Needless to say, this will contain spoilers.)
Page 3: The Fearsome Four have come into possession of a stockpile of nuclear weapons and are debating possible targets.
Jinx: I vote for Paris.
Psimon: You always say that, Jinx. What is with you and France?
Jinx: It ain’t just me.
First of all, the “I hate France” joke is sufficiently old and ubiquitous to be pretty tinny. Secondly, this particular “I hate France” joke seems to want to have its gateau and eat it too.
It’s vague enough to be open to interpretation. It could be viewed at a dig at the kind of people who consider “Freedom Fries” a reasonable response to international discord. Or it could be taken at face value: “Who doesn’t want to blow up France?” So it’s not just dated, it’s hedging.
After a bit more brainstorming, Psimon offers the following: “The whole point of this is not to be flashy, or to make a political statement of any kind.”
He dribbles a bit about logistics, and then we come to the punch line on page 4:
Jinx: You want to blow up Canada?
Psimon: I really do.
While not as bewhiskered as “I hate France,” “Canada is bland” has also passed its sell-by date. There’s also a lot of jabber between the set-up and the closing that doesn’t do it any favors.
This is immediately followed with an example of “the fake-out,” a conversation that seems to be about one thing but isn’t. Nightwing and Arsenal, airborne and in pursuit of villains with nukes, seem to be talking about a missed bathroom break. This doesn’t come across very clearly, largely due to the given circumstances, but Winnick has Shift clear it up on page 5: “They can’t be talking about using the john, right? The Pequod has a very nice toilet back here.”
It explains the joke, but as someone once said, explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You learn something, but the frog doesn’t make it through the procedure. Add to this the fact that Shift’s line could just as easily have gone to Indigo, who has a history of misinterpreting human behavior and of being overly literal. (It still probably wouldn’t have saved the joke, though. “The fake-out” generally works best in the other direction; you think they’re talking about stolen nuclear weapons, but they’re really just trying to find a toilet.)
Moving on to page 6, where the Fearsome Four is finalizing their target selection. Having already set up the France/Canada conflict, he misses the obvious follow-up, Montreal. (It’s French-Canadian! Everyone wins!) Vancouver is chosen instead.
Page 7: Shimmer: “Dr. Sivana used to give those handouts.” It’s a nice mental image, certainly, but it’s wedged into the sequence for its own sake. And it isn’t funny enough to merit the intrusion.
Things move along fairly smoothly until page 10, when we begin the “post-feminist humor” section of the issue. Arsenal starts it off by saying Jinx looks like “a 16th century Middle Eastern hooker.” On page 12, he explains to her that “psychotic meta-human bald chicks” don’t rate chivalry. (My guess? Jinx shot him down at a singles’ bar.)
There’s a tired joke at a man’s expense, too. In this case, it’s a sight gag. Grace is enduring a pounding from Mammoth, who bellows that “no @#$% woman is gonna hurt” him. Grace responds by racking him. This almost could have worked; it’s a reasonable enough tactic, going for the tender spot on a thick-hided opponent. But Winnick doesn’t trust the pencils to make the point, so Grace sums it up: “I think your ‘boys’ might disagree!” Ow.
Peppered throughout the concluding fight sequence are a number of pop-culture-influenced nicknames. Shift calls Shimmer “Elvira.” Grace calls Mammoth “Grizzly Adams.” Jinx calls Indigo “Smurfette.” I begin to suspect that VH1’s “I Love the ‘80s” is de rigueur viewing in DC’s meta-human community.
On page 20, the jokes turn a different kind of meta. Shift has survived a run-in with a nuclear warhead, and a relieved Indigo leaps into his arms. Shift: “Um, so does this mean that unspoken ‘thing’ we have is done?” Odd question, considering that she has her legs wrapped around him when he asks it. (And I think part of my brain died when I tried to come up with a list of all the movies that have featured the “happy girl jumps into arms of presumed-dead hero” sequence that’s swiped here.)
Dr. Sivana’s provided the bulk of the effective comedy in this story arc so far, mostly by subverting expectations. (His “Threatening Three” line a while back was probably the best in the series so far.) The twist ending follows through on that, and it’s nice that he gets a little epilogue on page 22. Unfortunately, it’s partially spoiled by Winnick over-articulating the gag: “What’s the point of being a mad scientist if you don’t have a tropical island lair?” Wordy, obvious, and a little too meta for my tastes.
It’s still a puzzle to me how Winnick, who’s written one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, can fall so flat when it comes to super-hero titles. But I wish he’d lay off the jokes for a while.