Flu Season for Nostalgia: Two Comic Reviews

"'Cause the good old days weren't always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems"
-- Billy Joel, "Keeping The Faith"

I would submit that the ways in which we use our oh-so-superior creative tools nowadays, from spellcheck to AI, reveals far more tolerance for the past than we'd care to admit. All across social media you'll find more "icebergs", "rank" lists, and things "you didn't notice" than you can shake a VR trigger at. Proof springs eternal, oddly enough within the very works of art that are cranked out. This is certainly evident in the comics reviewed below (Scrapper and The Ruff and Reddy Show), which, to beg your pardon, are more analog than digital in nature.

Scrapper

(A 6-issue miniseries from Image Comics first published in July 2023. Also available as a graphic novel hardcover.)

Set in a dystopian future with a strange yen for the 1960s, this is the saga of quite possibly the world's last good dog. Scrapper and his older adventure companion Tank regularly patrol the streets of New Verona, protecting the innocent, vanquishing the guilty, and scaring off rats. Scrapper is yet another hero with origins as mysterious to him as anyone else, with a shiny space-age collar and the ability to speak. It does become evident that an organization called SMITE (Special Monopoly for Industrial Tech & Engineering) has something to do with those origins, since their enforcers, in an attack on Scrapper's foster owners, awaken even more of his powers, and launch him on a - ahem - dogged quest for the truth.

Entrepreneurial game designer Cliff Bleszinski (Unreal, Gears of War) joined with multimedia tale-weaver Alex de Campi (Bad Girls, Archie vs. Predator) to bring you what is likely the simplest work either of them has done. Featuring the art of Sandy Jarrell and Juan Ferreyra, it all comes together nicely to create a story that's worth it, with fitting visuals and dialog. Parallels to other mainstream comic heroes are evident here, yet there'd be no surprise if any of the former studios, such as Ruby-Spears or Hanna-Barbera, optioned an animated version. I'm sure we can bank on a video game. This is a praising of the past that goes for essence over superficiality, unlike a lot of the content you might see now, and that's extremely noteworthy.

The Ruff And Reddy Show

(A 6-issue comic miniseries from DC, first published in October 2017. Also available as a trade paperback.)

There's not a lot that Warner Bros would approve, which is kinda hard to believe when you examine what's actually been given the green light since they acquired Hanna-Barbera in 2001. Additionally, there's NO American animation studio that hasn't cashed in on nostalgia, unless you want to count the well-disciplined stop-motion Laika productions, who have remained committed to originality. The more it takes place, the more the market widens for more than a hint of commentary on the practice, which makes this entry so refreshing.

For the uninitiated, the The Ruff and Reddy Show was a classic Hanna-Barbera television cartoon series from 1957 to 1960, which followed the misadventures of Ruff, a savvy little cat, and Reddy, a dog with a heart of gold. DC's imagined update, from a creative team led by Howard Chaykin and Mac Rey, catches up to the pair several years (and failed relaunches) later, where Red is a philosophical schlep surviving from paycheck to paycheck, while Ruff is living, wheezing proof that money is not the answer: he's wealthy, but also cynical and wretched. Meanwhile, at Creative Talent Management, a toon-run agency (we seem to have a Roger Rabbit-style world here), an ambitious new human promoter named Pamela, who appears to have a talent for wielding kismet like a weapon, takes up the Ruff And Reddy Revival account, a notorious lost cause, since it's quite clear the agency wants to be rid of them. Then it's off to the races!

There's no small amount of attraction for our market in this. The general character and production design calls back heavily to Caravan Palace's "Lone Digger" music video that I KNOW you've all seen. In-jokes abound; for instance, the first issue briefly introduces the personalities that tried and failed to join with the boys individually, such as the shapely Jessica Rabbit-callback "Sexx", stool-parrot "Willing", and Latino third-wheel "Abel". I leave it to your Google-Search-fueled imagination to figure out who tried to partner with whom.

The aspects I really want to focus on, however, are the ways its narrative deals in satire. The comics double-down on investigating the less apparent (but more damning) elements of pop culture in ways that the troubled Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, the shockingly-deep Fanboys, the quirky Paul, and even the great Galaxy Quest didn't manage to do, with narrated inserts like the one shown above. You should prepare for brutally-honest examinations as well, since such terms as "cultural blindness" and "Mandela effect" are not only reiterated, but readily defined for the readers. From self-juicing production teams to the most toxic of fan communities, no one is spared. They're not just presented for the sake of having a story either; the ways in which they bolster hubris and endanger art are cleverly observed.

Those disillusioned by the "anything goes" business model, which really isn't serving Hollywood all that well lately, have a true catalyst of discussion with this one.