The idea of taking the DC heroes and putting them in adventures with the various Looney Tunes characters might seem a bit…weird.
But damn if these weren’t fun stories I read in the trade collecting the various specials.
The problem should be one of tone. The Looney Tunes are slapstick comedic characters and the various DC heroes presented in this book are, with one noteworthy exception, not. Plus, one of the crossovers–Martian Manhunter/Marvin the Martian–at least has some thematic sense to it. You can make an argument for Yosemite Sam meeting Jonah Hex, too, as both are cowboys of sorts. But the rest seem rather haphazard, and most of the DC heroes are played straight.
Oddly enough, most of these special issues worked out, and most of them worked out by playing the Looney Tunes characters for laughs, making them recognizable but altering their backstories to allow them to fit within the DCU, and keeping the heroes for the most part as serious characters who generally ignore the weirder aspects of these talking animals.
As it is, the first two stories might be the weakest for not getting that balance right. Bugs Bunny just happens to be in the DCU, and the Legion of Superheroes is acting silly. The back-up story, added in a more Looney Tunes style, for this one is just a rehash of the main story for some reason. The second, with the two Martians, isn’t overly silly as it plays like a low rent X-Men adventure. As for the rest, they get better as they go along, with strong artwork, clever ideas, and generally fun stories.
And then came the best of the bunch….Batman/Elmer Fudd.
Current Batman scribe, and perhaps one of DC’s current best writers, Tom King writes a story with artwork by old pro Lee Weeks. It presents Elmer Fudd as a hitman with a distinctive speech pattern, known for carrying a shotgun. He works out of a bar where other Looney Tunes characters, here all redesigned as humans, drink and goes off to take out Bruce Wayne in…a rather good and fun noir parody. Yeah, this last story really, really worked. It shouldn’t. But it did.
Check this one out. Seriously Nine out of ten Tazmanian Devil versions of The Illiad.
By the by, bonus points for giving Foghorn Leghorn in the Yosemite Sam/Jonah Hex story an eyepatch. It’s never referenced directly, but clearly that’s meant to invoke Rooster Cogburn.
I only read the Batman/Elmer Fudd one after it started getting a lot of hype. I was very pleasantly surprised. Tom King can do no wrong.
True, but it turns out most of the others were also fun reads…just not as fun as King’s work.