Wrapped inside a Mike Mignola cover is one of the most fun goth projects comics has offered up all year. In fact, it's probably just one of the most fun comics of the year, goth fan or no. Death Jr. is based on a videogame, but reading the comic certainly wouldn't give you that impression, as Whitta turns in an entertaining story of young friends, father/son bonding and a war between death entities that nicely balances between humor and a darker tone and offers plenty of laughs. Whitta's story is a classic in the "young adventure" vein (think The Goonies, but with undead), and the color artwork by Ted Naifeh looks terrific.
This is a quirky, fun book that makes an interesting companion piece to Naifeh's kids/gothic book for Oni Press, Courtney Crumrin. Where Courtney Crumrin is sour and cynical, however, Death Jr. is a bright-eyed optimist, despite having a freakish appearance, a death touch that means certain doom for his pets and a father who's not always around because he's busy doing his job... which is killing people. Death Jr. sounds like a dark premise, something that would work in the morbid goth-y style of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Lenore, but it's not quite that sardonic, instead being more of a straightforward story of schoolyard social interaction with a slight streak of dark humor and a few allusions to legend and story.
In addition to a surprisingly chipper and fun lead character in Death Jr. and a delightfully "Father Knows Best" take on Death, Whitta populates the pages of Death Jr. with a number of fun characters. Each of them has either a tie to some kind of legend or story or just a generally weird vibe that makes them perfect friends for Death Jr., or DJ for short. There's Pandora, DJ's best friend who has a penchant for opening things she shouldn't, and Stigmartha, whose hands bleed spontaneously, both of whom are pretty obvious parallels to stories or legends. Then there are the two (well, technically three) friends who instead offer up more of a general freak vibe, the siamese twins Smith and Weston (get it?) and cranky fetus in a tank The Seep. It sounds like the kind of thing that should be disgusting and dark, but Whitta and Naifeh keep it light and funny instead.
Death Jr. has a sparkling sense of humor. You may know that the science experiment is gonna blow up, you may know that Pandora is going to open the box she shouldn't, but because of the way it plays out, you still laugh. Relatively subtle concept and background gags abound, like DJ numbering his pets instead of naming him or the various puns in his friends' names, and there's also some terrific, witty dialogue, whether it's Death's working stiff narration, the escalating dare (mixed with trepidation) interaction between DJ and Pandora or the back-and-forth between conjoined twins Smith and Weston.
Which isn't to say that Death Jr. doesn't have its turns of darkness. DJ's dark turn in the second issue surprised me, and I was especially shocked at the changes in character that befall Pandora. While there's always a sense that DJ and his friends will prevail, things start looking pretty dark, and Moloch is a perfectly scary bad guy with a nice sense of style and a great visual from Naifeh.
Naifeh's artwork is even sharper in color than it is in black and white. His imaginative gothic design sense is very much evident in his design for Death (looking like an extra from a Mignola comic who escaped into this whimsical kids' book) or in the backdrops of the supernatural museum. Most of the book, however, is a strange mix between the simplicity of the "animated" look and the stylistic flourish most commonly seen in Mignola's work but just as evident in the work done by Naifeh in the past. There's a surprisingly bright color palette as well, although it's never too bright, instead working to contrast the more unusual trappings of DJ's world with the normal world he doesn't quite fit into. It's a terrific art performance that serves this strange, funny comic well.
