Breaking Wind on the Fourth Wall
Written By: Chip Zdarsky
Art By: Joe Quinones, Joe Rivera
with Mark Deering, Jordan Gibson
Lettered By: Travis Lanham
Cover Price: $3.99
On Sale Date: August 31, 2016
**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
Here’s the closing scene song from Howard the Duck, probably titled “Howard
the Duck,” sung by Lea Thompson!
How about that? Now, read my review of issue
#10!
Have you ever read the current run on Howard the Duck and thought, “This comic book is okay, but there’s
way too much of an anthropomorphic duck named Howard in it. What I’d really
like to see is the creators speaking to me, the reader, through a couple of
douchebag aliens that make a bunch of inside jokes about their employer and
co-workers like some fucking tepid Canadian version of the Office.” Well, Marvel has heard your plea, true believer, and
crafted an issue with you in mind! While Howard is being throttled by
interstellar reality show producer and drug-addled fatass Mojo, purple aliens
Chipp [wink] and Jho [wink, wink] are shitting bricks because they realize
their whole ruse is up. Seems they are part of a some kind of
entertainment-spewing space fort or something called Sparkitron? It really seems
irrelevant. Point is, Chipp and Jho broke some rule by scripting Howard’s
real-life adventures, and by having him find out that his whole life is just
some shitty television show. Which, I suppose, is better than finding out that
your life is a shitty comic book.
Chipp and Jho decide they have to get down to Earth to try and
defuse this situation, and if that doesn’t work, hightail it the hell out of
Dodge. On the way out, they talk to a fake (book editor) Will Moss, and a fake Ta-Nehisi Coates, then they bump into a fake Erica
Henderson and a fake Ryan North (who is riding a hoverboard and dressed like
Future Marty from Back to the Future Part
2), and it’s all very precious until you realize you’ve paid four bucks to
read something that should have been doodled at a company meeting and pinned up
on the break room’s bulletin board. The two of them hop in a spaceship and
secretly take it down to Earth, where Mojo is talking—oh how he is talking!
Blah, blah, blah-blah, blah. Meanwhile, Aunt May is with the partially-robotic
cat Biggs, just sort of hanging around. I’d forgotten about this angle
entirely, and here it is! A very important scene. The entire book hinges upon
it. Then, the fight between Howard, Tara, and Mojo’s key grips spills out onto
the street, as if the previous scene didn’t matter! How rude!
How does this whole thing wrap up…Chipp and Jho land
on Earth, bust out that superhero-killing Sentinel-Punisher from issue #8—and
there’s even a comment in the narrative about it being a clever call-out! Yes,
how delicious! A stupid thing from two issues ago, brought back! And then to be
so self-referential—how delightfully witty! How very splendid! It all ends with
Chipp and Howard getting into a struggle, and Howard says his adventures from
before Chipp and Jho started screwing with him were written better, so Chipp
stabs him. In the last panel, it looks like Tara is cradling Howard’s lifeless
body, which is unlikely because there is one more issue to this. Thank flipping
God.
I don’t have one complaint about the art or plotting.
In fact, I think it’s spectacular. But I have a big problem with this story
that seems to have been extracted from Chip Zdarsky’s linty navel. I love
comics that break the fourth wall. John Byrne’s She-Hulk is one of my favorite comics of all time. Ambush Bug was
my favorite character as a little kid. But this shit is just covering up for
the fact that writing endings are tough. “Gosh, I’m having trouble with
finishing this story—I know, why don’t I insert myself into this story to show
how much trouble I’m having with finishing this story?” And I might be more
forgiving if Zdarsky hadn’t done it before in other comics. This thing has
gotten lame as hell, and the last issue will be more a mercy killing for this
complete mess of a tale.
Bits and
Pieces:
3.5/10
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