While there's plenty of life left in the superspy genre (witness the success of TV's Alias and the anointing of yet another James Bond for the film franchise), it's been around long enough that the cliches and standards of the genre are known to most people, and thus ripe for parody. Enter John Layman, with his keen eye for subversive humor, and Dave Dumeer, whose art style, reminiscent of a cross between Michael Gaydos and Dave Crosland, is perfect for humor, and the end result is Armageddon & Son. This is not, in general, a laugh out loud humor book, but it's hard not to admire the keen edge of parody displayed throughout, and there are certainly gags that gave me a chuckle. Imagine Austin Powers with more of a focus on Dr. Evil and you've got a pretty good idea what to expect.
The central gag of Armageddon & Son, about an evil mastermind and his slacker son uninterested in the family business, is in fact pretty similar to the Dr. Evil/Scotty dynamic from the Austin Powers movies. However, the approach here is definitely different, and while the general thrust of the gags is the same (supervillain plots and modus operandi don't make a heck of a lot of sense), the actual jokes are ones that haven't been played out before. For one thing, Alphonse Feeney is considerably calmer and more self-assured (and maybe a touch more psychotic) than Dr. Evil, and Doon Feeney is a hell of a lot less intelligent than Scotty Evil. Layman gets plenty of mileage out of the slacker nature of Doon's existence, as much as he gets out of the supervillain cliches at least.
There's something endearing about Feeney's unapologetic, casual evil. He murders at a whim, plots the destruction of all mankind and casually tries to off his children when they inconvenience him, and yet... at least he's not as smug as that smarmy Falcon bastard, his superspy nemesis. The viewpoint here is to present those in the spy game on both sides as somewhat amoral, flip sides of the same coin, and there's never any real sense that the Falcon is doing what he does for any noble reasons either, just that he enjoys the game. Then again, the tone of Armageddon & Son is one where global armageddon can be played for laughs, so nobody is really in this for noble or complicated reasons, they're in it because it's funny.
Certainly, Armageddon & Son is quite funny. Feeney's over-the-top insistence on using murder to solve every one of life's little problems results in some wonderfully chaotic humor. Layman hits the nail on the head when he has Falcon questioning Feeney on why the villains always kill their henchmen. "I don't get it. This guy did his job. Did everything he was supposed to do. Why kill your own man? Why do you evil spy guys always do that sort of stuff?" Feeney's admittedly practical but hilariously amoral reply? "Why not?! Like you said, he did his job." A perfect encapsulation of the code of morals and behavior that Feeney carries around, and a pretty good summation of the tone of Armageddon & Son overall.
Layman's off-kilter script is accompanied by equally off-kilter artwork by Dave Dumeer. Dumeer's art isn't always as clear as it could be, as he plays around with perspective or other storytelling tricks like the double-page splash full of motion (like the one that opens chapter three), but in general, his storytelling and comedic timing is dead-on. Certainly his eye for detail and design, from the henchman who make up the roster of C.L.A.W. to the Jon Peters would be proud wheelchair/mechanical spider near the end, is ideal for the book. There's a lovely, loose line and exaggerated style at work here, too, that reminds me a lot of Layman's collaborator on Puffed, Dave Crosland. Dumeer's sensibilities seem to match up nicely with those of Layman, and the result is that the humor is carried through visually as much as in the dialogue.
