Damage Control #1 // Review
The 13th floor of the Flatiron Building is infinite. Well...okay...maybe it’s not infinitely infinite, but it’s big. It is its own pocket dimension. It probably hadn’t always been that way, though. Its current occupants might have something to do with the situation. The tenants in question get a big hello in Damage Control #1. The series that always seemed to be way more clever than any of its scripts gets another glance thanks to writers Adam F. Goldberg and Hans Rodionoff. The visuals for the first issue are lowered into place by Will Robson and colorist Ruth Redmond. As goofy as it is, the first issue kind of breaks the goofy meter with a silly back-up written by Charlotte (Fullerton) McDuffie with art by Jay Fosgitt.
Gus hadn’t really even heard of Damage Control before he went in for the job interview at Shardbucks. Turns out it’s actually kind of a big deal, which makes getting an internship with the company that much more interesting. Granted...Gus will have to start in the mail room, which turns out to be a much more dangerous job than it might seem at first. Elsewhere, a new kid named Bart is forced to show his mother around Damage Control, which is embarrassing but fine until Thanos shows up and things get weird.
High weirdness in an office comedy set in the Marvel Universe has a remarkable amount of potential. Goldberg and Rodionoff live up to some of the potential of the premise. The script lands squarely on the silly end of the comedy as Nightcrawler and Quicksilver just happen to be hanging out around the office, and a missed paper memo means the Skrulls blow up Earth. The importance of paper memos and the...existence of a physical mailroom in an office run in part by Tony Stark seems a little...silly. The back-up story by McDuffie is so goofy that it’s kind of difficult to follow what’s going on.
Robson makes the strange, surreal nature of the office feel suitably fantastic. Cramming a whole bunch of random characters in and around the corners of the panels helps a bit. The cartoonish exaggeration of things adds SOME whimsy to the proceedings. A lot of opportunities were missed around the edges, though. Some of the comic details are missing. (The Obnoxio ice cream cake really needed a cigar for comic effect.) The amped-up rubbery nature of Fosgitt in the back-up feature would have been a lot more fun if the script was a bit more intelligible.
Though the first issue of the series might not make a huge impression, there are lots of little details that make for a reasonably fun first issue, like the fact that the apocalyptically missed memo was going to an underwriter named “Stanley Forbush.” Kind of fun to think that Forbush Man’s dad was the difference that saved the planet. If the overall plot had paid a bit more attention to detail, it might have been a better issue. (I don’t know...mention SOMETHING about the 13th floor needing physical mail because it’s a pocket dimension that doesn’t get good internet. More of that sort of thing might have helped...)
