Gravy Boy

(Jack Rabbit Stewdios, 2006)
™ and © Jack Rabbit Stewdios

Advance information on Gravy Boy made it sound like a hilarious send up of super-heroes. The art and the graytones are solid, and the dialogue is OK, but Gravy Boy is treated like a “legit” super-hero. Writer Marty Blevins is only mildly funny, whereas a comic book like Gravy Boy needs big laughs. Blevins will need to pull out all the stops, if the comic is going to live up to its hilarious name.

In the old days, a character like Gravy Boy would’ve been a funny back-up story in a regular series. Then, once in a while, he’d get his own spin-off special. The sad truth is that a concept like Gravy Boy can only be taken so far. After you’ve milked all the super-hero spoofs (which have already been done to death) and after you’ve milked every gravy-related scenario, your only hope is to move on to more ridiculous super-heroes and a more ridiculous world of super-heroes. It worked with The Tick.

Ultimately, comedy is not about a particular subject matter, especially such an over-analyzed and over-parodied subject as super-heroes.

–Tony DiGerolamo

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