I have deep and abiding love for Peanuts and Charles Schulz. And a deep and abiding love for satire and parody.
Bless you, Jason Yungbluth: you satisfied both. Weapon Brown was a great little one-shot that took the characters of Peanuts lore and thrusts them into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, gritty and nasty to the ridiculous. Patty runs a whorehouse. Marcy is one of her "girls." Linus is a mad occultist for the Cthulhu-like Great Pumpkin. Lucy is a mad scientist.
Charlie Brown is the tough, violent loner Weapon Brown. A gun-toting macho-man with a cybernetic arm surviving as a grifter and mercenary. He's just a round-headed kid.
The comic wasn't just a dig on Charlie Brown. It was a dig on the nuclear fears of the 50's where the Peanuts were born, and a comment on the hyperviolent, "dark'n'gritty" comics of the 90's. The majority of the cover is black-and-white, with a malevolent-looking Weapon Brown standing tall. He looks backlit, with the bulk of body dark and sharp, the white spaces showcasing the lines of muscles and the mechanics of his robot arm. The legs fade into the title below. Only the ripped and tattered yellow shirt with the black zigzag and the title below are in color. The title itself stands out because it's modeled on the more popular gritty comics of the time, like Wolverine, Weapon X, or Deadpool, the letters sharp and hard.
In short, it's ridiculous fun. But with depth if you want to look for it. Think, "What if Frank Miller wrote Peanuts?" This is pretty much it.
Got any parodies you love with awesome covers?
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