Garbage Pail Kids: Trashin’ Through Time #5 // Review
A few kids have access to a time-traveling DeLorean. What could possibly go wrong? Writers Adam F. Goldberg and Hans Rodionoff explore the craziness in the conclusion to Garbage Pail Kids: Trashin’ Through Time #5. Penciler Jeff Zapata, inker Chris Meeks and colorist Dustin Graham finish-out the series with a predictably wild rush through time that leads to an ending that is charmingly coherent on a few different levels. Time travel stories are always a bit awkward, bt Goldberg, Rodionoff and Zapata do a pretty good job of leaning-in to the weirdness in a conclusion that almost seems to have some weight of some sort to it.
Adam Bomb and Brainy Janey have made it to an apocalyptic Las Vegas. How do they know? Well...there’s a sign out front of the city that clearly says “Apocalyptic Las Vegas.” They’re not exactly there to see the sights or anything like that. There’s a rather large group of angry spoof kids there who are quite upset with Adam. The fallout. From the detonation over his skull has created a hellscape. Naturally there are a few kids who want to punish him for that. If he and Janey can survive that, they’ve got quite a few more challenges to get through if they’re going to survive.
Goldberg and Rodionoff have once again managed a really weird and oddly appealing fusion between the classic trading cards of the 1980s and a standard action-based spoof comic. There’s just enough story to pour-in around the edges of a packed parade of different Garbage Pail Kids, all of whom are clearly labeled as they make their appearances in expansive, little panels. Adam is in the middle of it all looking typically startled. Theoretically there could have been more of a desire to do something a bit more clever with the property, but once again, a straight ahead comic book/collector card fusion seems strangely satisfying.
The art team has a bit of a challenge on its hands once more. The story crams the panel with so many characters who all manage to look drastically different while simultaneously all looking...kind of the same. In so many places it looks like a monotonous wallpaper...or maybe a page from a collector card binder. The fact that they are able to bring across any kind of a story at all is quite an accomplishment.
If there wasn’t such a pounding need to rush the characters through as much as possible as quickly as possible, it might have been fun to explore a more nuanced look at the psyche behind the classic image of Adam and that perpetual atomic mushroom cloud looming over his head. Really...any one of these characters might be interesting to get a closer look at in more of a narrative context, but this series is far too interested in cramming the characters into every panel to make much of a deeper analysis of the characters behind the images.
