The Usual Suspects Get New Looks In IDW’s ‘Clue’ [ECCC ’17]
Announced at Emerald City Comicon on Friday, IDW is adding another Hasbro property to their comics lineup in June, with the launch of a Clue comic based on the classic board game. Written by Paul Allor with art by Nelson Dániel, the book is a humorous murder mystery in keeping with the tone of the franchise, but with a new and modernized versions of the classic characters. According to our friends at The Hollywood Reporter, Clue #1 will feature three alternate endings, much like the 1985 Clue movie. It also features a cover by Gabriel Rodriguez, as well as four variants by Dániel, each of which spotlights two of the characters.
The new character designs are particularly promising, and I can't help but wonder just who some of the them are. The board game features six player characters, as well as murder victim Mr. Boddy. The Rodriguez cover above features six characters recognizable (by the colors of their outfits, if nothing else) as Miss Scarlett, Mrs. Peacock, Colonel Mustard, Mr. Green, Miss White, and Professor Plum. However, it also features four additional characters: a heavyset man in a brown suit, a stylish woman dressed in black and pink, a man in a black suit and white gloves, and a woman in gray jeans and a black leather jacket. Then means a total of ten potential suspects. It may be a little early to start solving the crime, but let's take a look at Nelson Dániel's character-spotlighting variant covers and see if we can figure out who some of these people are:
I suspect that neither of these guys are player characters from the game. The gentleman with the candlestick has the look of a butler, perhaps analogous to Tim Curry's Wadsworth from the movie (but perhaps not with the same secret). I suspect that the other character is Mr. Boddy, mainly because he's missing from Rodriguez's cover, which implies that the chalk outline on the floor is probably his.
These two are the easiest by far. It doesn't take a Clue expert to guess that the woman dressed all in white is Mrs. White, and the man in a mustard-colored military uniform can only be Colonel Mustard.
Clearly the man in the green shirt is Mr. Green. That's a gimme. But I have no idea who the lady with the pipe might be. By process of elimination, I first suspected she might be Mrs. Peacock, but the Rodriguez cover includes an older woman dressed in blue, who's a much closer fit for that character. So this must be a new character, which makes me wonder if her name will have something to do with the color pink, in keeping with the theme.
With all this red, this can only be Miss Scarlett, but what a fascinating and all-new take on the character. Rather than the slinky femme fatale she's usually portrayed as, she appears to be an '80s-inflected pop star – reminiscent of Jem and the Holograms, in fact. That's a fun and far less expected take.
In general, all of these characters look as fresh and new as icon's from 68-year-old board game possibly can, and that makes me excited to read the book and see what Allor and Dániel are bringing to the table.