As a new comic book publisher, Boom Studios is really doing their best not to be pigeonholed into any one genre. So far, they’ve got the Giffen/DeMatteis superhero farce, “Hero Squared,” Steve Niles’ Japanese monster themed book “Giant Monster,” the “Zombie Tales” anthology, and now, they have Giffen and Mike Leib’s remix comic, “What Were They Thinking?!”
Based on the Wally Wood war comic, “The War Next Door,” this entire book consists of Giffen and Leib replacing the text that was originally written for the stories with their own twisted humor. In a sense, it’s like Marvel Style writing gone wrong. As near as I can tell, all of the original art and layout remains intact, but the stories themselves are nothing like their creator could have ever envisioned. Ironically enough, the end result often feels a lot like old “Mad” parodies Wood once worked on.
Sexism, racism, jingoism and a mess of other -isms, as well as a phobia or two, are lampooned in the book’s four stories. While there are only a few jokes that actually had me chuckle aloud, there’s no denying that the book as a whole is amusing, even if the majority of it tends more towards the “smirk to yourself” sort of humor. Oftentimes, it’s the less outlandish jokes that come off as the funniest, probably because it’s these jokes where the art and text seem to work together almost seamlessly.
If Boom Studios and Giffen plan to develop this idea into some sort of ongoing series, I do hope that they keep it fresh by sending up another genre of comic book next time around. While WWTT?! was definitely amusing, I’m not sure we need book after book of remixed war comics. Still, this is worth a few minutes of your time and your $3.99. It was a complete accident that this ended up in my hold bin this past Wednesday, but I’m not complaining.
