IDW Publishing 2017
Written by Paul Allor
Illustrated by Nelson Daniel
Lettered by Neil Uyetake
Because i’m not thrilled with the cast of characters I did a google search of the Clue game to see what i’ve been missing. Unfortunately what I see here still doesn’t sync completely with the game though it isn’t as far off as I’d originally thought. Still I grew up with the original game and the movie which should have been enough but now we’re with all these new people and inclusive or politically correct renditions and well it just screams fake and forced. It doesn’t feel like Clue to me anymore and I guess that’s just a personal thing.
Mr. Boddy invites a group to his mansion for a dinner party, he dies then chaos ensues. Now two detectives are at the mansion to figure out who did it and why. Again I’m not sure about adding the Detectives to the mix but i’m not Paul and he felt they were needed. That the Butler (not Wadsworth) talks to the reader is silly to me and breaks the fourth wall absurdly and it just doesn’t seem necessary to me.
I think Paul tries too hard to take the movie’s premise and then turn it into something new, unique and original. It fails in my opinion but he’s certainly going that extra mile to do it. Part of what made the movie such a cult classic were the people playing the characters. With these updated jobs and careers it feels less like the Clue that people remember. For a younger audience who don’t know the original then perhaps this is great.
The one thing Paul can do here is take these characters and tie in their backgrounds with Mr. Boddy much more. The whole Blackmail angle and wanting him dead and how all the characters have ties to one another it’s much more able to be done in comic book form. The characterisation however seems a little trite to me, too expected or cliche. There’s some diversity but there’s no real connection made between the suspects and the reader.
So the interiors here are cute. The use of page layouts through their angles and perspective are handled very well. The use of backgrounds when we see them is solid though could be better if we saw more of them. Making the characters more current is okay and gives a flair for individuality but the all-ages style doesn’t do them much justice.
There are really good strong elements to this that would make an incredible Clue story but at the same time there are too many things that seem to have been forced into being. The flow doesn’t feel natural to me. The setup was too quick and the explanation as to why two detectives are there investigating when really it should be the guests is beyond me. There was a real opportunity to make this a great who dunnit thriller with that added horror aspect of being picked off one by one by an unknown assailant. Instead it’s a like getting the store brand generic version that lacks the flavour of the original.
It’s an admirable try but for me falls way short of it’s goal.