REVIEW: The Muppets Take the Marvel Universe
Wocka wocka, True Believers! The Muppets Take the Marvel Universe is a one-shot comic book, and it’s available RIGHT NOW at your local comic book store, on Kindle, and probably on other digital comics stores!
I’ve been a Marvel comics fan since I was eight years old, and a Muppet fan since I was old enough to watch TV, so I was curious to see how this crossover would play out. So I read it! Twice!
The comic opens with a full-length feature story called “The Greatest Show (Not) on Earth,” written by Chip Zdarsky with art by Pete Woods. Zdarsky has written some offbeat and often hilarious comics, so he was a good choice for this project. Without giving away too much, I’ll just say that the Muppets have to team up with a bunch of Marvel superheroes to put on a show, not because they have to save their theater but because the Marvel villain Mojo forces them to.
Recently, Marvel and DC did a pair of crossover comics called Spider-Man/Superman and Superman/Spider-Man. In those comics, there was no explanation given why characters from different universes were interacting with each other — they just presented it like Lois Lane had known Mary Jane Watson for years, and it allowed those stories to just be fun without getting bogged down in the logistics of inter-multiverse travel.
I was hoping The Muppets Take the Marvel Universe would take the same approach. What if Iron Man just… showed up at the Muppet Theater? That would be fine! Well, this story does explain how and why the Muppets and the Marvel superheroes are in the same place, but I didn’t mind it because it happens in a way that makes sense for both realities. And it allows the Muppets to meet one of Marvel’s funny talking animals.
Zdarsky picks nine popular Marvel heroes to team up with the Muppets for their mission to take on Mojo, and there’s a good and functional superhero story here that, but the real highlights are the little moments where characters bounce off each other. By now you’ve likely seen images of the sequence where Emma Frost attempts to read Piggy’s mind and is overwhelmed by the fabulousness of what she sees.
Gonzo and Deadpool also get along well, and as for the other heroes, there’s a lot to be said for the entertainment value of letting them do silly stuff. The story is full of jokes, and it’s impressive how well Zdarsky manages to capture so many different characters’ voices. It’s not surprising that he can write Spider-Man well, but he can also make you think “Sure, that sounds like Scooter!”
I won’t tell you how the story ends (because that would be such an awful SPOILER for this comic where the plot and story obviously matter so very much!), but I will say the story device that makes the crossover possible could absolutely be used again if they wanted to make another one of these things.
Speaking of things… One of my only complaints about this comic is that there’s no appearance by one of my all-time favorite Marvel characters, the Thing! Surely he’d have a great time palling around with, say, Sweetums? Maybe next time.
The rest of the comic consists of shorter stories featuring smaller character team-ups. WARNING: I’m going to talk about which Muppet and Marvel characters are in these stories. If you want to be surprised and you haven’t read the comic yet, stop reading this!
“A Terrible Invention,” written by Kyle Starks with art by Mike Henderson and color art by Yen Nitro, finds Bunsen and Beaker doing a “Muppet Labs” segment with Dr. Hank Pym and Dr. Bruce Banner.
I guess it was a no-brainer for this comic to include Bunsen (mis)using Marvel universe technology to disastrous effect, but the results play out effectively. Pym and Banner are good straight men for Bunsen and Beaker, and the outcome of the experiment really takes advantage of the comic book format. (This story is also how I found out that comic book Hank Pym is an old man now. I was out of the loop. COMICS!)
“Pigs of the Galaxy” was written by Mackenzie Cadenhead, with art by David Baldeón and color art by Nitro again. In this one, the crew of the Swinetrek from “Pigs in Space” meet two of the characters from Marvel’s… well, you can probably guess from the title! (I’ll give you a hint: One of them is another talking animal and one of them is a tree.) Baldeón draws the Muppets in such a way that they resemble the puppets more closely than any of the other art in this comic (while still rendering them expressively) and the tone of the story is very classic “Pigs in Space.”
“Bad Man” was written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, with art by Athila Fabbio and color art by Mike Atiyeh. It’s just 39 panels long, and the two words of the title are the only words of dialogue. Animal is in this one, as you might have deduced from the title. And so is the Animal of the X-Men, Wolverine!
I never expected to see these two characters meet in an official publication, but gosh, it’s cool that this exists now. I’m sure some readers will say “I would read an entire ongoing comic book series starring these two!” and I understand where that’s coming from, but the brevity of this story is one of its strengths. It introduces our favorite claw guy and our favorite drum guy, there’s an incident, and bang, the story’s done. That’s all we need!
A much less obvious pairing happens in “Just What the Chef Ordered,” in which Dr. Strange’s companion Clea is sick and craves a special soup that can only be made by one chef. And I don’t mean Angelo!
How did writer/scripter Ashley Allen and writer Chef Paul Carmichael (who are joined by Paco Medina on art and Nitro once again on color art) come up with this? I guess the Muppets don’t really have a resident magician, so the Swedish Chef is the closest thing available to a dark sorcerer who can befuddle Dr. Strange with his bizarre potions. And Dr. Strange is a guy who generally takes himself seriously, so he’s a good pick to be exasperated by the Chef’s style.
The story does raise a question, though: Is the Swedish Chef capable of making a good recipe? Or does the Swedish Chef’s food only taste good to natives of the Dark Dimension?
Finally, there’s “Muppets Assemble,” written by Adam F. Goldberg (the Muppets Mayhem guy?!) with art by E.J. Su. This is another simple idea with a lot of Muppety potential: The Avengers are holding “auditions” for new members, and a bunch of Muppets show up hoping to be considered.
This is a great idea, but having read it twice, I can’t help but think it would have worked even better as a sketch starring the real Muppets and the actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Su draws a great Lew Zealand and Pepe and some wonderful disgusted facial expressions on the Avengers, but at five pages with a few large panels it feels a little rushed, and I bet the Muppet performers (and the MCU actors) would have a great time playing around with the material.
Which, I suppose, means that in addition to making a sequel to this comic, they should also put the Muppets in some promotional videos on YouTube for Avengers: Doomsday. Sure, it’s already going to make a billion dollars at the box office, but if they added Muppets to the marketing, it could make a billion and one dollars!
Anyway, this is a fun comic! I recommend it to Muppet fans and Marvel fans, humans and mutants, pigs and Wolverines! Excelsior, and we’ll see you next time on The Muppet Show!
by Ryan Roe – [email protected]
https://www.toughpigs.com/review-the-muppets-take-the-marvel-universe
