I'm guessing this is not what you expected to kick off the "E's" with. Or maybe it was, if you know my affection for the old EWJ.
A three-issue mini-series from mid-90s Marvel, written at least partially by Dan Slott (he gets plot credit at least), which I was not expecting when I bought this several years back. It's kind of an odd bird of a story. It's not an origin, except perhaps for Peter Puppy's friendship with Jim. Jim's already a well enough established hero that there's a background subplot about several of his villains hiring Evil the Cat to sic his lawyers on Jim with a lawsuit for all those times he beat them up.
(The lawyers keep get waylaid one way or the other. Going to the wrong address, chasing ambulances full of injured super-villains, stuff like that.)
The main villain actually ends up being Bob the Killer Goldfish of all things, who tricks Princess What's-Her-Name into agreeing to marry him to save Jim's life. The comic's version of the Princess is sort of a weird amalgamation of the cartoon's version (where she's a hardbitten rebel leader/warrior princess), and the video game version (who seemed like sort of a bubblehead). So she's very strong and ready to fight, but also kind of dumb when the plot requires demands it. Not unlike Jim, actually.
Barry Crain and De LaRosa handle most of the art chores, except the back third of issue #2, which is drawn by Manny Galan and Carlos Garzon, who utilize a simpler, cleaner style. De LaRosa really likes to shade in as many muscles on Jim's suit as possible, and Crain's version of Jim is much more animated and a little feral looking. The top of his head is always moving or squiggling about, and he can get a distinctly manic look in his eyes at times. Crain also likes to add little details to the background. Like having one of Evil's lawyers look like Pinhead from Hellraiser, or what looks like a TIE Fighter getting plowed through at the top of the splash page up there.
Which fits with the general tone of the comic, a nearly constant stream of jokes, one-liners, puns, sight gags, the occasional meta-joke, etc. I'd say there's more misses than hits, but there's a few that are kind of funny.
5 comments:
Huh. It's weird to see Jim in comics and not being drawn by TenNapel.
Other than the instruction book for the first Earthworm Jim game, I think the only other time I've seen TenNapel drawn Jim was his very brief cameo in Ratfist, where I think TenNapel vented a little of his frustration about fans who bug him about Earthworm Jim all the time.
I looked it up, and apparently he Kickstarted some Jim graphic novels in 2019 and 2020, but before that (except for Ratfist) he'd never drawn the character most associated with him in the medium most associated with him. That's pretty unusual.
I wonder if it was something to do with a rights issue, where he couldn't do his own comics about it?
I feel like he made allusions in some of his other work (Power Up in particular) to feeling like he got hosed by the video game company on his idea. (I definitely remember he didn't feel the version of Jim in the cartoon matched his vision of the character).
Possibly; everything I can find suggests that he designed the character but then Shiny bought all rights. On the other hand, TenNapel was the producer on the cartoon, so he clearly retained some control.
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