Broken Frontier

Plot?... What plot?! No one told me there was supposed to be a plot!.... Ambush Bug!!!

After disappearing for years and brought to public attention again in the pages of 52, not only has DC’s oddest "hero" (and I use that term loosely) returned, he’s come back with his original creative team in tow. Keith Giffen (plots) and Robert Loren Fleming (dialogue) return to the wild, wacky, and way-beyond-normal world of Ambush Bug.

You might think that the bit at the top of this review about there being no plot is a joke… it’s not. Well, not exactly. "Continuity Cop" Jonni DC has been murdered and it falls to Ambush Bug to try to find the culprit. Along the way his old nemesis Argh!Yle! shows up along with a new mastermind – Go-Go Chex. Along the way Ambush Bug satirizes and skewers much about DC from the last 30 to 40 years.

It is really hard to critique a book that so deliberately throws all of the rules out the window – a title that sets out with nothing more in mind than to provide humor and wry observation. Writers Giffen and Fleming take whacks like a piñata at everything from the "Women in Refrigerators" plot device to hokey 1960’s dialogue (and plots) to hokey 1960’s comic book characters to Identity Crisis to modern society… with some jokes about the pop band Chicago thrown in for good measure. Even if you’ve never picked up a previous issue of Ambush Bug the character is easy to understand… he’s simply nuts! In fact, if there is a criticism to be made here it is that a reader almost has to be a DC fan to get all of the jokes. References to the Go-Go Checks that used to adorn the cover borders of all DC comics, the Jack Kirby era Sandman, Space Cabby, even Jonni DC are not things and characters that a casual DC reader will be familiar with and so the jokes are probably likely to fall flat with that segment of the readership.

In addition to his plotting duties, Giffen provides the pencil work for this issue. There is something of a 1980’s style to this – which hearkens back to the Bug’s roots – but Giffen also pulls off a nice retro 60’s style in a couple of places as well as a pretty good Kirby impersonation on the Sandman. No matter what style Giffen might use, though, it would probably seem in perfect keeping since the character bounces around, through, and over all aspects of comic books and comic book culture. Giffen infuses his art with a palpable sense of whimsy and fun that is simply infectious.

In the end, for a casual fan of DC Comics most of this issue will go whizzing by overhead without slowing down. If you are steeped in the legend and lore of the comic book world, however, you are liable to find Ambush Bug: Year None a rare beast in the modern comic book market – a funny book that is actually funny!