At its best, parody attempts to wittily comment on the state of our culture through the trends in our media – novels, film, comics, and more. At its worst, it is a lazy attempt to make a quick buck. Rich Johnston’s “Captain American Idol” falls somewhere in between these two extremes. The question is, how far it swings, and in which direction.
Written by Rich Johnston
Illustrated by Chris HaleyDuring World War II, Captain American was America’s #1 entertainer, thrilling audiences stateside and on the front lines – until a Komikaze attack on his show seemingly took him away forever. But now, a TV talent show looking for fresh blood instead finds the Captain’s frozen body. Another key piece of THE AVENGEFULS parody saga, BLEEDING COOL’s Rich Johnston shows us if an old entertainer can recapture the hearts of his country.
On the one hand, Rich Johnston understands that there is a cultural aspect to parody. You don’t just throw in a few scatological and bawdy jokes then call it a day; there needs to be a point beyond just making people laugh. The creator’s cultural observations and the way that those observations are presented are what makes parody funny in the first place. Between this, “Scienthorlogy,” and “Iron Muslim,” it does seem like Johnston at least came into this with the idea of making some kind of commentary on our current popular culture, and that is certainly a good start. However, “Captain American Idol” does not go any further than the premise. We are given a mashup of the Captain America film as imagined through the lens of reality television – but why? If Johnston is trying to make any sort of claim about our society’s – admittedly waning – obsession with reality television, it is difficult to find. If he isn’t, and is instead shoving together two pop culture trends for the heck of it, then he’s barely better than the creators of, say, Meet the Spartans. Considering that the American Idol scene lasts for the span of a single page, it’s more likely to be a case of the latter.
Maybe this is taking the matter too seriously. Maybe not all parodies need to have some kind of message or statement. But here’s the thing: “Captain American Idol” is not funny. Not everything has to be setup for a punchline, or the punchline itself, but the comic is just silly for the sake of being silly, with no rhyme or reason to its supposed humor. Sure, the “random” approach to humor has been done before, and done well, and, no, not everything needs to follow standard conventions of comedy, but Johnston might benefit from playing it closer to the book. It should be noted that the one joke that made this reviewer laugh involved a comment on the American media’s tendency to let British curses fly left and right without any censoring – a clear, understandable examination of our culture, presented in a way that was humorous, rather than a joke that existed solely to “be funny.”
There is no reason, however, to complain about artist Chris Haley. Well known for his work on the popular web comic “Let’s Be Friends Again,” Haley is the kind of artist a humorous comic like this needs. His characters are expressive and accomplish the hard task of carrying Johnston’s rather lackluster script. Rarely do we get to see an artist more used to the horizontal strip format adjust to the mostly vertical layout of today’s comic books, but Haley doesn’t stammer – for the most part, he appears completely comfortable with the format, despite the sometimes repetitive pages of four equally proportioned panels. The coloring seems a bit over-rendered; there’s no reason it would not look just as good, if not better, with the more simplified coloring style that Haley uses in “Let’s Be Friends Again.” Of course, that’s no reason to slam Haley himself, who I hope will be getting more work published – and soon.
While it might be the better of the three “Avengefuls” comics, primarily due to Haley’s art, “Captain American Idol” still is not a good comic. Perhaps it could have been better if Johnston had explored his mashup concepts a bit more, rather than creating them and calling it a day, but that is probably just wishful thinking. If you’re morbidly curious, flip through it in the shop – but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Final Verdict: 3.0 – Pass
