![]() It’s rare for anything, comic or otherwise, to strike such a perfect balance between tongue-in-cheek parody and earnest meditation, but this one does. Coyote style - and it never stops or slows to look down. Instead, if anything, Batman/Elmer Fudd takes off over the cliff and just keeps going, Wile E. RELATED: How Gotham Girl (And Tom King) Saved Batman Sure, there are a lot of elements here that could have easily prompted it to take a swan dive over the edge into grim-and-gritty dourness (it's a murder-mystery at it's core, after all) but it never comes to that. Kindzierski’s cool, limited palette coloring elevates Weeks’ art in a way that makes the book a veritable haunted house, populated by the ghosts of Saturday morning cartoons - But that’s not to say Batman/Elmer Fudd is a dark comic. ![]() This is a version of Gotham City that exists in a nebulous sort of crossroads between worlds strange and almost eerie thanks to Weeks’ heavy inks and Eisner-flavored compositions. Behind them, a suit-and-spectacle-clad humanized Foghorn Leghorn sits playing poker with the biker incarnation of Yosemite Sam, a sullen and troubled looking Marvin the Martian mumbles to himself about his plans to blow up the Earth, a mohawked bruiser with a crazed look in his eye and a shirt that reads “TAZ” throws some brutal punches in a bar fight. Bugs Bunny, re-imagined as a buck-toothed, carrot eating Joker-analogue, sits forlorn and drinking at a bar which just so happens to be tended by the round-faced, stout, stuttering owner Porky. To make it even more surreal, the world King and Weeks crafted for the story is populated by “real” incarnations of other instantly recognizable Looney Toons icons. RELATED: Batman Rebirth, Year One: A Look At Tom King’s Bat-Epic, So Far It’s also completely unironically written in Fudd’s iconic r-to-w speech impediment, which only serves to add a level of unbridled self-aware absurdity to an otherwise completely earnest and straight-faced story about broken hearted heroes. It’s a barrel of fun, with a good story to boot.The one shot, titled - again, not a joke - “Pway For Me” is a zoomed-in, meticulously crafted noir classic, complete with rain slicked neon lights, a seedy dive bar, a murder mystery, and a femme fatale. ![]() I mean, he’s a grown-ass man running around in a cape and cowl – how can we not have a laugh here and there? Overall, Batman/Elmer Fudd Special #1 succeeds in crossing over two characters that we’d never think could work. Why so serious? There’s certainly room for a bit of silliness in the Batman world. If you’ve ever wondered what Batman would look and act like in a Looney Tunes cartoon, King and Vaughns have you covered here. It’s funny, ridiculous, and so over the top that you can’t help but laugh. The backup story, also written by King but with art by Byron Vaughns, is more in line with the classic Looney Tunes modus operandi, as it puts the Dark Knight in Elmer and Bugs’ playground. ![]() Heck, it’s up there with Tim Sale’s work on The Long Halloween if you ask me. But don’t be fooled by the glum artwork and morbid colors on display, this is a terrifically illustrated tale. On the art front, Lee Weeks cultivates the tone in fine style, keeping the settings and characters gloomy and playing around with the shadows to make it even cagier.
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