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A review by crookedtreehouse
Husbands by Tania del Rio, Sierra Hahn, M.S. Corley, Ron Chan, Brad Bell, Natalie Nourigat, Ben Dewey, Jane Espenson
2.0
I found this in a collection, and wondered why I hadn't heard of it before, as it came out while I was working in a store that sold a wide variety of queer graphic novels. It's co-written by someone who wrote Buffy The Vampire Slayer, it has an introduction by Neil Gaiman. How did it slip through the cracks?
It's awful.
While I understand from the back of the book that this is the continuation of a sitcom that I'd never heard of that has a dodgy but maybe endearing premise, this graphic novel is just a bunch of lazy cliches with very Whedonesque dialogue (which makes sense, Espenson wrote some of the best work attributed to Whedon) that are meant to be witty satrical takes on pop culture and comic history.
There just aren't any laughs in it. This style of dialogue is so dependent on what was then current pop culture that it comes across stilted. Oh, sure, I remember when jokes about Lady Gaga being derivative of Madonna were .. ahem ... en vogue but it's hardly a timeless punchline.
We're rather quickly hurled into the trope where the characters find themselves as characters in a variety of different comic books. The art is perfect for each era, and is the only thing keeping this from being a one star book . The stories are unmemorable and unfunny. I'm not sure if Espenson was off her game or if her humor doesn't translate from TV to comics because the dialogue in this book made my eyes roll so hard that I fear I may have had a concussion. It's some of the cringiest dialogue I've read by someone who definitely knows better.
I don't reccomend it, unless you can find a copy of the storyboards with all the dialogue removed.
It's awful.
While I understand from the back of the book that this is the continuation of a sitcom that I'd never heard of that has a dodgy but maybe endearing premise, this graphic novel is just a bunch of lazy cliches with very Whedonesque dialogue (which makes sense, Espenson wrote some of the best work attributed to Whedon) that are meant to be witty satrical takes on pop culture and comic history.
There just aren't any laughs in it. This style of dialogue is so dependent on what was then current pop culture that it comes across stilted. Oh, sure, I remember when jokes about Lady Gaga being derivative of Madonna were .. ahem ... en vogue but it's hardly a timeless punchline.
We're rather quickly hurled into the trope where the characters find themselves as characters in a variety of different comic books. The art is perfect for each era, and is the only thing keeping this from being a one star book . The stories are unmemorable and unfunny. I'm not sure if Espenson was off her game or if her humor doesn't translate from TV to comics because the dialogue in this book made my eyes roll so hard that I fear I may have had a concussion. It's some of the cringiest dialogue I've read by someone who definitely knows better.
I don't reccomend it, unless you can find a copy of the storyboards with all the dialogue removed.