Written by Melissa Jouben
The three short-stories that make up Looney Tunes #236 all revolve around television entertainment in some way. The first story is a fairly straightforward parody of The Bachelorette. The second is a Behind the Music type of documentary chronicling the true story of Sylvester and Tweety’s relationship. The final story is a quick tale of Elmer Fudd teaming up with Yosemite Sam to try and capture footage of the Tasmanian Devil for his nature documentary.
Anyone who’s caught The Looney Tunes Show, a show that aired on Cartoon Network from 2011-2014 which reimagined these characters as living in a suburb and encountering real-world situations such as Porky Pig being overworked and underappreciated at his accounting job, might appreciate the attempts this comic makes at once again incorporating a bit of realism into the Looney Tunes cast. In the DC universe, Bugs Bunny exists in real life and ends up winning “Single Mingle” despite being the host and not a contestant. In that sense, they’re at least staying true to character.
Some of the content in these stories explicitly shows the Looney Tunes trying to date human women or succumbing to the evils of wealth and fame in a major way, and it’s a little uncomfortable to see our childhood heroes portrayed like this. The final story in the issue, which is a much more traditional Looney Tunes story, was by far the best. Although it would obviously have worked much better as a cartoon due to the action sequences, the details in the artwork helps make up for what we don’t get to see in motion. In particular, I really liked the way they drew Taz during a sequence where Taz is out of energy and Yosemite Sam is trying to provoke him into flying in a berserk rage.
If the goal of these comics was to modernize the characters and stories, I would begrudgingly accept that they are succeeding. I’m not sure if they’re succeeding in amusing both children and adults in the process, however.
Rating: 5 out of 10
