2 out of 5

Good jesus… I had better memories of this series.  But the votes are in, with patient rereads of all Ambush Bug minis (except the ‘Nothing Special,’ curses), and though Year None is the most, erm, directly critical of the Bugs, making DC Chief Dan Didio an actual character (and villain) of the series and making no chuckly bones about lambasting crossovers and marketing gimmicks every other panel (compared to the relatively friendly jabs of ‘Bug’ and ‘Son of,’ which, sure, made light of characters lost to continuity but in a sort of pal-about, ‘but we love you DC’ way)… it’s also a nigh incomprehensible mess after issue one.  And not the nigh-charming frenetic mess of the 80s minis, just a complete lack of flow from page to page, some narration seeming to start mid sentence and scene/plot changes without warning or without the sorta’ context of switching between story and gag mode that was previously used.  The books even look drab, subtracting the stunningly surreal paneling Giffen would get up to in the prior series.  There’s a ‘little engine that could’ feeling underneath the surface, which keeps you reading, and the gaff that allowed a huge break where issue 6 disappeared, resulting in the extra-meta issue 7 (marked 7 of 6) making fun of itself for being late seems to support that despite AB being a fan favorite, there were troublesome waters plaguing the book.

Both ‘Ambush’ and ‘Son’ were at their relative bests when following through with plots, and ‘Year None’ is the same.  Issue one starts with an investigation into the murder of Jonni DC, and it’s not only a well-tuned snark against current violent comic trends, but manages to be a fun love letter to Bug followers, bringing back references to ‘lost’ DC characters who’d been mentioned in the other minis.  Issue two stays on task for a little while, but begins to lose the thread when – in pursuance of a gag making fun of a then-current DC crossover – gets distracted and starts a gag based off of its gag.  This is the same writing style (perhaps ‘improv’ riffing on itself) that led the other series astray but Giffen and Fleming almost rope you back in with a new villain they’d introduced in issue one (Go-Go Chex) and then start a pretty good gag with the Bug being the cause of most of the (again) then-current DC crises… but, typically, this is forgotten in issue three which is where you start to lose me.  I appreciate that our creators no longer use the captions for conversation, sticking more to the convention of Ambush being aware that he’s in a comic versus the dialogue allowing to cross both ways, but by the same token, perhaps that restriction is what causes the contents to be so mish-mashed.  The last half of the series is stop and start a page at a time.

Overall, it works in the same sloppy and anarchic fashion that Giffen and Fleming had established, but there’s equally something forced about the presentation that makes it less enjoyable to read through in one sitting.  It worked better as a once-a-month dose of mess.