3 out of 5

I was gonna rate this a 4 for the sheer WTFness of it all, but if I’m being honest, reading it is a bit of a slog at points, so that’s that.  Still – your first response – my first response – anyone’s first response – to hearing about this title should be a blubbery ‘wha wha wha?’  This takes place in the Marvel U, it’s a one-shot, and it ties into absolutely nothing.  There’s no wayward attempt at shoehorning it into some tie-in (though of course Gerber mentions his Nexus from HTD and Man-Thing), there’s no overly obvious parody going on (though it being from the 90s perhaps I just don’t remember some wacky debacle that influenced it), and there’s no real point to it as far as I can tell, unlike some of the other totes random stuff Gerber has scripted.  But those have generally been at least ongoing series (Nevada) or part of some larger puzzle he’s weaving, even if he never completes it (hi, dwarf from the Defenders).  Also: one weaves puzzles.

So… some ancient demonic force has been playfully manipulating events from behind the scenes all demonically for years via transportable lips that are puckered through a crystal ball to reach into our universe and speak from any given source.  In gleeful form, Steve writes the demon as having no purpose, exactly, except to be a scamp.  Madly powerful but stuck to some non-Earth dimension due to crippling agoraphobia, now come some machinations when demon is stepping up to cross over into our world.  Thankfully, we have a group of specially trained New Jersey moms and girlfriends who know some ninjitsu and the art of making exploding marzipan.  Naturally, they are led by a butch, wide-shouldered militant grandma type.

It was a nice surprise to see Amanda Conner on art – her Dan Decarlo-esque pencils as funneled through some underground comix playfulness are always buoyant to look at, even if the paneling maintains the sort of static, unmoving-camera of that Archie Comics influence.  Without there being much meat to these characters, she gives them all personality through body language, and the loose-handed depiction of the various demons (as Jon McCrea gets very loose when he’s in ‘Dicks’ mode) is a blast, the kind of over-the-top expressionism from latter-era Looney Tunes / Warner Bros stuff (like late 80s, early 90s).

Still, has any of what I’ve described sounded grounded?  No?  That’s ’cause it can’t possibly be.  I just sort of turned the pages with a befuddled smile, and imagined Steve doing the same as he jotted down whatever-the-fuck came to mind.  I wish we could know if there WAS an intention, or if Marvel just asked him if he had any ideas and gave him license to do this wackadoo one shot.  I would totally fall in love with any writer who latched onto this and tossed in a mention or an appearance elsewhere, ’cause this seems to be the rare occurrence of featured characters who have truly never come up again.  If you’re a Gerber fan, this is all of his random tendencies mashed together.  If you dunno Steve from Bendis, then you’ll have no clue what to make of this, and I think it’s too wrapped up in its own internal wackadooness to appeal as a random find, which accounts for its sorta’ unknown status in general.