[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artists: Mauricet
Summary
It’s a red-letter day for the good folk of Unliklistan as they start to power up their first atomic reactor. But after pushing the wrong button, the ultra-rare radioactive element, unstabilium, has been released into the atmosphere!
Now it’s up to pilot Lt. Col. Richard “Dick” Atcherly and his navigator Captain Dudley “Mutt” Muller to save the day. Will they safely complete their mission? Or are things about to get a little…wacky?
Positives
If you are a child who grew up on those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, like me, the you must have seen Dastardly and Muttley more than a hundred times, ads I can still hear Muttley’s trademark snicker, 30 years from the last time I watched an episode of theirs. In this debut issue of the infamous duo’s return to popular culture, we find a scientist playing with an unknown element, which has much dire consequences than he ever expected AS an explosion in the country’s capital, causes the US military to go on a top-secret mission involving our favorite pilot.
While enroute to their destination, they encounter a drone, giving off some funny looking gases. This causes our heroes experience some unusual body reactions. Atcherly wakes up disorientated in a hospital, no knowing what happened, with FBI agents, asking if he knows what happened. By book’s end, we find out what happened to Muttley. Overall, for such a veteran writer of military tales, he is particularly adept at recreate the humor amongst service members which he does here masterfully.
Negatives
Everything is pushing on all cylinders in this comic, which makes the only drawback, the inadequacy of pages, but Ennis more than makes up for it.
Verdict
Buy if you love Hogan’s Heroes with a fable of government experiments gone wrong
