I've been a fan of Desperate Times in its two previous at-bats at Image, each time being disappointed but not surprised that the idiosyncratic buddy comedy didn't fare well in the super-hero-dominated market. This time out, Eliopoulos seems like he's got a better shot, as he's got a format and a style that compares very well to popular Image "comic strip comics" like Liberty Meadows and PVP. Unfortunately, each new iteration of Desperate Times has also brought with it some tinkering with the formula, and the changes wrought to this latest incarnation felt like a step backward for the strip, even as they're a big step forward for one of the lead characters. The notion of a marriage taking place basically off-panel, instantly changing a bachelor strip into a strip about married life, reminds me in many ways of The Norm, which had a similar bumpy but ultimately interesting transformation, and I hope Desperate Times will slide back on track the way that The Norm did.
So for those who came in late: Desperate Times tells the story of a small ensemble cast consisting of two bachelors, their drunken sloth (literally) of a roommate, a sister and her wacky ex-boyfriend. The previous incarnations of the strip reminded me in pleasant ways of Seinfeld, albeit with a slightly more lowbrow approach that wasn't ashamed to go for standard guys vs. girls humor or familiar but still funny jokes. I'm not sure whether my issue with the shift in the new series is that the married guy and single friends adjusting to the new situation is more well-trod ground, or whether the jokes just don't seem quite as edgy... honestly, it might be a combination of both.
Which is not to say that Eliopoulos has lost his way with the funny. Toad's trip to the grocery store to meet women quickly slides into a series of gags that demonstrate without a doubt his cluelessness and lack of luck with women, and while the whole series of strips does have a sort of familiar ring to it, it is also where Eliopoulos's comic timing and true skills are most evident. The rest of this issue, dealing with Toad and Marty's "separation" and the new relationship between Marty and his wife Staci, feel a bit tired. There are funny moments, such as the last-panel reveal in Marty's neuroses-filled rant about the troubles of a new marriage, but much of the sequences are of the same single-to-married transition gags that are the stuff of your average sitcom.
What's unfortunate about these strips is not just that I've seen Eliopoulos do much better, but that I can see a more interesting story in his text pages that open and close the book. His story of the struggle to bring Desperate Times to the syndicates, and then to Marvel, and then finally back to Image, are very entertaining and seem like the type of story that could have made for some fun and personal storytelling. Ditto the tale of the new Mac, which hints at a much-happier married life for Eliopoulos than the cliched and generally unhappy union that he has placed his character into. In fact, I was left wondering if this Desperate Times might be the result of the various tinkerings with the strip that he talks about doing in trying to make the syndicates happy, rather than Eliopoulos just writing from his heart.
At any rate, while I was disappointed not to find Desperate Times as hilarious as I remembered it being, I'll certainly be hanging in there for a while. If nothing else, Eliopoulos's cartooning is a lot of fun, and he does particularly entertaining work on the constantly embarrassed expressions of Toad or the last-panel reveals that serve as punchlines for a lot of the jokes. There's certainly comedic timing and skill in the art, it's just that the material this issue mostly wasn't living up to it.
