[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Bill Morrison
Artist: Kelley Jones, Michelle Madsen
Summary
“Does anyone else find it strange that Acme Labs has gone from building a better mousetrap to weird science in just a couple of years?”
“I know what you mean, Fred. Ever since Roswell, it’s a whole new ball game.”
The Lobo/Road Runner special issue is as weird, violent and funny as you would have hoped. Giving the classic duo a new in-universe origin story that feels fitting to the Warner Bros characters and finding the perfect niche in which the modern day interstellar hitman Lobo can try his hand at fraggin’ a bird.
Positives
The issue is all laughs and weird science, with a gripping explanation as to how alien DNA was manipulated into the genetic code of terrestrial animals by Acme Laboratories in 1949. For some, it might feel like a sort of defamation of the cartoons, but personally I feel giving Wile E. Coyote and Co. a sci-fi origin involving Area 52 (canon to the Brendan Fraser “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” movie, amongst other stories) was a smat and fun twist to include, and the desert sequences involved therein are beautifully drawn despite the chaos of the story.
It makes sense for Looney Tunes to make at least the minimum amount of sense required to have them share a panel with the DC headliners, but fortunately with Lobo we don’t really need things to be too logical. The Coyote can withstand tremendous amounts of pain, and the Road Runner can bend reality to avoid pain. Lobo likes to get pain and blow stuff up. And so, Wile E. hatches a plan to hire the E.T. exterminator to ease his aviary menace. It’s simple, and that’s why it works.
Negatives
I was maybe a little disappointed to find Wile E. beginning to talk, I was really hoping his placard-based communicating wouldn’t end. Also, Acme Laboratories may have been given far more credit than ever due; like hell, they could make a successful anything let alone splice alien DNA with a rabbit.
Verdict
Totally fun, funny and creative re-imagining of the classic cartoon characters which brought them into the perfect part of the DC universe, bringing together an utterly satisfying crossover.
