IDW Publishing 2019
By Dash Shaw
All of your favourite suspicious characters are back in this new brain twister based on the timeless detective game. Ripe with puzzles, secrets, and lies, in CLUE: CANDLESTICK everyone's a suspect! Cartoonist auteur Dash Shaw unleashes his murderous imagination on the quirky, thrilling and mysterious world of Clue!
If I am to be honest until the film I had no conscious knowledge of Mr. Boddy. All I remember as a kid is wanting to be Miss Scarlett and wonder why the purple piece was a man heh. We played it was fun, I grew up and forgot all about it. Then the film comes out and it has nice revival and again it passed me by. I am happy that this at least has the characters I know of, by name only, and that Dash (just a side note now all I can think of is Dash Goff, writer) has taken them and made this an entirely new and original story is well done.
The opening here is certainly eye-catching that’s for sure. The narrative of Professor Plum and what is happening around him provokes a number of feelings and reactions. The of course we see the postman and suddenly things change a bit. I kind of feel like he’s an adult from the Charlie Brown cartoons or some classic Sunday funnies in the paper. So once the story gets underway we see a plethora of these little clues of our own that Dash throws in, more than likely to see who is paying attention.
I like how we see Plum decipher his letter and we learn about the objects in the original game. Dash creates a history for them and what they were used for and why they made it into his collection. Also the significance of the object and the person they come from, while he doesn’t name names again the clues are present to help you figure things out. That Dash keeps putting these minute clues into the book he manages to engage the reader and helps them use their minds and imaginations in essence becoming a part of the story themselves.
The characterisation here is pretty darn good as well. During a dinner party where the guests are presumably meeting each other for the first time we learn a lot about each person. Also the pointing out of things is clever and interesting and it makes me wonder how many are red herrings. Oh poor paranoid Colonel Mustard couldn’t find a boyfriend thanks to his time spent in service, it’s also too bad he wasn’t more attractive heh.
The interiors aren’t really a style that I gravitate towards, more the opposite really. It just feels like body proportions were throw out the window. I am going to go with the interiors here being the quirky part of the descriptor above. Dash is able to throw in some odd and fascinating things into the interiors here and you’ll have to keep an eye out for them. Also there are some wonderfully almost kitschy moments thrown in as well that break the seriousness of the moment with some perfectly timed humour. I will say there is a nice diversity we see in the characters which makes Dash’s vision of his story comes to life in some very unique ways.
The way this book flows is really nice. The story & plot development makes me happy as each of them act like they’ve got something to hide as well as an air of untouchability around them. There are moments when they call each out and we see this exchange of words that continue to make us laugh and wonder what they brought to the table. Once upon a time I would’ve passed on this based on what I saw visually but the story is fantastic and the interiors become charming and it’s one that will thoroughly entertain.