Given Dorkin's talent for misanthropic humor, he seemed an odd match for the happy-go-lucky dim-wittedness of Bill and Ted, and these icons of '90s metal slackdom didn't really seem to have enough potential to fill a comic at any rate. However, the book enjoyed a short but well-spoken-of run from Marvel Comics, and I'm enough of a fan of Dorkin's all-too-infrequent comics output that when Slave Labor decided to put out a trade paperback of these stories, I wanted to at least check them out. As it turns out, Dorkin's take on Bill and Ted is notably different from the movie versions in subtle ways, but it does have the gonzo energy of Dorkin's more frenetic Dork segments and maintains the genial doofiness that made both Bill and Ted movies enjoyable. It's hardly a lost treasure of the medium or anything, but this first volume of Bill and Ted's continuing comic book adventures is surprisingly fun.
Dorkin's approach here is in the tradition of humor comics that inspire more of an "oh, that's funny" reaction than open gut-busting laughter. I didn't really laugh out loud at any of the pages, but I was struck by the clever patter of the dialogue, by some of Dorkin's more amusing twists on the notion of a couple slackers with access to time travel and the personification of death and by the cynical look at the music industry contrasted with two guys who supposedly were going to save mankind with their music. The two Bill and Ted movies were more or less goofy teen flicks, but Dorkin, while staying true to that general style, crosses over into a different kind of humor where Bill and Ted are as much the objects of ridicule as the heroes of the day. And yet... the affection that Dorkin confesses to in his introduction to the volume comes through loud and clear, as for all their oafish behavior, Bill and Ted are still undoubtedly the simple-minded good guys of the piece, Forrest Gump-ing their way through the most outlandish of situations and coming out on top.
Much of this collection is given over to Dorkin's adaptation of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. This adaptation violates a couple rules of entertainment, being a comic book adaptation of a movie sequel, which should result in twice the normal amount of suckage. However, the adaptation of Bogus Journey instead winds up looking like a really strong pilot for Dorkin's series, setting up some of the backstory and the supporting cast as well as the general wacky tone of the whole thing. Reading it mostly had the effect of making me want to go back and view the movie, as there were gags in here that reminded me how funny bits of the movie were, but it was also fun to compare my 10-year-plus old memory of the flick with Dorkin's adaptation, unburdened by the needs of real-life budgeting and costuming. While the story is recognizably the same as the movie, there are elements original to this version as well as a generally bigger style that makes the adaptation read more like an original story than just an also-ran copy of the movie. The car chase featuring childhood traumas, cut from the movie before being filmed, is a good example, because it fits so perfectly into the gonzo style of Dorkin's comic adaptation, but would have seemed out of place in the movie somehow.
Once Dorkin has cleared the movie adaptation, things loosen up just a little bit and actually become more recognizable as Dorkin creations. It's still considerably lighter than most of his comics work, with even the more despicable examples of humanity like a cheating manager or sleazy music industry guys coming off as laughable instead of evil, but with Dorkin free to plot on his own, things take on a bit more of an edge. Death's tour through time, delighting in telling people when and how they're going to die while enjoying "death tourist attractions" like the Hindenberg or Pompeii, or the gruesome fate that befalls Linus and Geoffrey, the medieval Bill and Ted, are both examples of terrific dark humor.
This is only volume one of the Bill and Ted story, and there are some subplots and characters that don't quite make sense yet. I'm presuming that the bass player, Phil, will eventually have some purpose in the story, because at this relatively early stage he basically just looks like another addition to an already-crowded cast. Also unresolved in this volume but more clearly going somewhere is the presence of a sort of time police unhappy with Bill and Ted's mucking around in time, a time travel genre staple that gets only a few scattered pages here and there in this issue but which promises to have a more entertaining finale in volume two. Dorkin is also saddled with a basic plot problem, that having these guys serve as the musical basis for future society is a hilarious gag but that if you try to explain it, it all starts to fall apart. The movie dealt with this in a comic musical montage with music by KISS, Dorkin is saddled with actually showing how these two doofuses can manage to navigate the shark-infested waters of the music industry and come out on top. This does give way to some very funny story moments, such as Death booking the guys into funeral performances, but the basic premise teeters on that edge between "so stupid it's funny" and "just stupid," and too much examination of how these guys save the world could tilt it too far in that direction.
Fortunately, Dorkin's diversion into the music business side of things is mostly a chance to take shots at the variety of ethical and logical failures of that industry, and then he's on to the truly ludicrous and mostly unimpeachable aspects of the concept, namely time travel and metaphysical interaction with higher beings. From a time travelling roller coaster to having to wrangle hundreds of tiny aliens so that they'll combine into one big, smart one, Dorkin takes off from the more unusual story elements in the second Bill and Ted movie to provide any number of funny, ludicrous events.
Usually, when something that was originally in color is reprinted in black and white, it loses something, and occasionally loses everything that made it work in the first place. That is not the case here, as the black and white artwork by Dorkin and DeStefano (with additional work by Marie Severin and David Mazzucchelli) is truly, to put it as Bill and Ted would, excellent. Terrific graytone work by a variety of artists gives the art as much if not more layering and shading as it would have had with the ugly early '90s coloring, and of course Dorkin's cartooning skills are as strong as ever, with wonderful attention to detail, strong expression and use of exaggeration and some of the most imaginatively weird character designs you're likely to see. 8/10
