Damage Control #2 Review

Written by: Adam F. Goldberg, Hans Rodionoff
Art by: Will Robson
Colors by: Ruth Redmond
Letters by: VC’s Clayton Cowles
Cover art by: Carlos Pacheco, Rafael Fonteriz, Rachelle Rosenberg
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: September 28, 2022

Damage Control #2 moves Gus out of the mail room into the Consumer Affairs department, where he’s tasked with screening public claims of superhero-related damages. It doesn’t go well.

Is It Good?

If you read our reviews (of course you do because Weird Science readers are the best), you know we struggled to find the funny in issue #1. But a new month brings new hope. Does Damage Control #2 find the funny for a fresh take on the Marvel universe? No, not even a little bit.

Humor is hard, and humor can be very subjective, but there’s nothing remotely funny here. Not a sly joke, wry joke, a humorous situation, or even a bit of amusing slapstick. Not a single panel in this issue brought a smile to my face, and that’s a tough assessment of a comic that’s supposed to be funny by design.

When last we met Gus, he made a potentially world-ending error by shredding a memo intended to save the world from a Skrull invasion. Recognizing that mail sorting and delivery is not Gus’s value add, he’s moved into Consumer Affairs to prescreen citizens for legitimate cases of superhero-related damage. Needless to say, Gus does a terrible job at getting to the truth.

For different reasons, the problem with issue #2 is the same as with issue #1. Gus’s misadventures in issue #1 didn’t work because there’s no emotional connection to Gus, so you couldn’t invest in the hijinks befalling him. In issue #2, you get to know Gus a little better, only to realize Gus is a barely functional idiot. Worse, instead of being disconnected from Gus because you don’t know anything about him, Gus in this second issue, is genuinely off-putting, so ambivalence is replaced with disdain.

If watching a mildly obnoxious, barely functional idiot almost kill an innocent family doesn’t seem funny to you, you’re on the right path. Goldberg and Rodionoff are going for absurdist, farcical humor and are mucking it up just as badly as Gus trying to learn the ropes in his new job.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

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Final Thoughts:

Damage Control #2 is a wildly unfunny attempt at showing the absurd side of the Marvel universe. The main character has evolved from an audience placeholder to an annoyingly off-putting idiot in the span of a single issue, so the only thing funny about this issue is the cover price.