Over the weekend, at Emerald City Comic Con, IDW Publishing announced a new comic coming later this year. What is it? Let me give you a CLUE.
Yes, I’m talking about the classic board game, Clue. According to the announcement, which was followed up with a press release from IDW Publishing, the 5-issue miniseries based on the game will debut in June.
We also got a look at some art, thanks to the wonder that is Twitter:
variant cover I did for upcoming @IDWPublishing "CLUE" comic, by @PaulAllor & @nelsondaniel.
Inks by me, colors by Nelson#makingcomics pic.twitter.com/jQga9Ne8gv— Gabriel Rodríguez (@GR_comics) March 5, 2017
According to the press release, the five-issue miniseries will follow the classic Clue characters – including Col. Mustard, Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet and the rest – and will build “an intriguing new world with these characters.” The book is another joint venture between IDW and Hasbro, which owns the Clue license. IDW also publishes books based on Hasbro properties Transformers, GI Joe and MASK. While IDW recently created a new universe for many of its Hasbro properties, I doubt the Clue comic will be part of that Revolution.
IDW’s press release about the issue sets the premise:
The new series opens after the doomed Mr. Boddy is murdered at his own dinner party and everyone is a suspect! Will Boddy’s body be the last to fall, or is it just the beginning? Readers will have to follow the clues to solve the mystery, which deepens even further as issue one will feature three alternate endings!
Heeey, that sounds familiar! Where have I heard any of that before? Oh yeah…
It sounds VERY familiar to the 1985 movie starring the amazing Tim Curry as Wadsworth the Butler, orchestrating the collection of guests to a dinner party where Mr. Boddy (played by a guy named Lee Ving… my favorite movie name ever) is murdered and yes, everyone is a suspect. The movie even had THREE alternate endings!
As a kid, I would always make sure that I caught every showing of Clue on HBO. To this day, it’s one of my favorite movies to throw on to kill some time. It still holds up and with all the talk of a new Clue movie that’s gone on over the last few years, I can’t imagine why it would be needed. There’s no way it matches the comedic sensibilities of the original cast from 30-plus years ago.
Will the new comic series reference the movie? Or is the description of the first issue in the press release as much of a red herring as communism? I guess we’ll find out in June.