Dashiell Hammett meets The Muppets in Dynamite’s new miniseries, which kicks off with The Muppets Noir #1, written, drawn and inked by Roger Langridge with colors by Dearbhla Kelly. The story’s set during the usual behind-the-scenes frenzy of The Muppet Show, as Kermit stresses over one of this week’s guests: a piccolo-playing panda whose piccolo is made of bamboo.
Yep, you don’t have to be a Trivial Pursuit World Champion to know that that’s a recipe for disaster, and amidst all the backstage hub-bub, an accident happens, propelling Kermit into Dreamland, where he’s Private Detective Flip Minnow, a Humphrey Bogart-style film noir detective decked out in a trademark trench coat and Fedora. And there’s a pig missing!
The book perfectly captures the individual personalities of The Muppets, from Kermit’s diplomatic reserved manner to Miss Piggy’s hurricane-force personality to Fozzie Bear’s wacky dad jokes to the utter strangeness of Gonzo. The early scenes of the book, where everyone was rushing around preparing for the show, captured the tone of the original ’70s Muppet Show so well that at any moment I expected Sandy Duncan to suddenly enter and Kermit announce, “Miss Sandy Duncan everyone!”. Alas, that didn’t happen, but these early scenes were still a lot of fun.
Once Kermit enters Dreamland and assumes the identity of hard-boiled detective Flip Minnow, various other Muppets pop up through his dream. Though the story gets more serious, it all still feels like one long Muppet Show skit and that’s a good thing, because a couple musical numbers pop up throughout!
What I loved most about the book (other than it contains Muppets) is that all the chaos of the Muppet Show is on display here, especially in the background details. When Kermit walks into his client’s office, decked out with paintings on the walls, you can be sure a few minutes later not only will the client be speaking, but those paintings will come to life too. The whole world’s alive here – nothing’s static, from the artwork to the furniture to the wardrobes.
Writer/artist Roger Langridge is no stranger to depicting the surreal, frenetic and bizarre, with his past work on Judge Dredd Megazine series The Straitjacket Fits, and he delivers all that same crazy offbeat humor and mania here (toned down a bit for teen audiences, of course). Dearbhla Kelly’s colors are bright at the beginning then more subdued once Kermit’s detective dream begins, giving the latter half of the book that film noir feel.
Even though the mystery at the heart of the book isn’t very compelling, that’s really not the point here. The point is to just enjoy watching Kermit and the other Muppets do what they do best, entertain and delight, and there’s plenty of that here.
