Super Angry Birds #1 Review

I've never been much of an "Angry Birds" kind of guy...I'm not much of a mobile-phone gaming kind of person either. But I am very much into comic books, so when I saw that THIS was a thing, I had to check it out. Though I suppose it's not the strangest thing these birds are geared up for. 

I'm pretty sure an "Angry Birds" movie is still in production, and if it's anything like this, faithful fans may be a little disappointed at the end result. But, I mean, it'd be pretty difficult to adapt the point of the game into anything other than a simple game to pass the time. How do you make a story out of several birds with angry faces being sling-shotted at various wooden or metal structures? 

Well, apparently IDW thought they would be able to, and so we have this little comic to look at today! 

The cover is pretty boring considering how, outside of our main heroes, there is nothing to it. Just a boring blue background with a little shadow sphere beneath them and their logo, which even then is pretty lame. The Justice Friends have a better logo than these guys!  

We open in New York City, where a human girl is serving food to a bird, potentially a hen, and potentially a pig. Oh and also another human. With more humans in the background. 

I'm just going to assume that we as a society--that can barely get along with ourselves--are more than happy to be serving food to sentient birds that have humanoid limbs. Though, the role we humans play must be pretty small as we'll see. It's almost as if we're in a "Planet of the Apes" type of world where we are reduced to mere servants while our animal overlords have taken over and become super heroes/ villains. 

Oh, and, you know it's New York City because they're serving pizza. Because nothing else is ever eaten in New York City. 

Apparently, the pizza stand is set up in pig territory, where a pig goes to take a slice, but winds up getting burned and runs away. It should be fairly obvious that the yellow bird, who we will soon be introduced to as "Chaser," is indeed a super hero. 

His reaction to the robbery is, "Well, he got burned, that's what he gets for stealing pizza," rather than trying to stop the man for stealing food! Or is that okay? 

But the pig comes back and drives the car through the booth, nearly killing everyone there! 

Chaser gets her out of there when the car is lifted up and we are given a pretty unexciting reveal of our heroes! The group quickly dispatches the pig and leaves after Chaser uses his super speed to fix up the shack, everything having been caught by a Raven reporter. Why'd they pick a Raven? Because in folklore they gossip...?

Back at some other restaurant, we meet our villain of the issue, King Pig. 

I'll give the comic credit that it does stick to the source material and has the pigs as the ones that the Angry Birds are trying to get to, just as it is in the game. The weird thing is, though, that the pigs are also the police force. There's no actually telling that all the pig cops are corrupt, so, are they all really evil? Another thing to tilt your head at is the fact that the King Pig dresses like a king, implying that there is a monarchy here. Well, is New York City a kingdom? 

More than likely it's simply a parody of the Kingpin, a premier Spider-Man and Daredevil villain, but, you don't need to dress him up all fancy like that. All of his other "subjects" never dress like royalty. Most dress like cabbies or undercover folk. I feel like, with the Angry Birds out there, you would want to cover yourself up so they don't go straight for you, as they've shown they can easily take down your men. 

And when you think about it, why don't they? King Pig is only ever shown with his men but he seems to be in high-profile places. What's to stop the Angry Birds from just waltzing up, throwing down, and sending King Pig to jail for police corruption and a violation of laws? It just doesn't make sense. 

Here's another weird thing to note: there's our second spotting of a human, and again she is serving food. What role do humans play in this society of birds and pigs? Like, can we one day rule New York, or did the King Pig rise up and thwart humanity? Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but, then again, you could do a "New York City," without having to involve humans, as it just confuses the reader as to what kind of world they live in. And I know it's already a thing, but, if the King Pig rules New York, wouldn't a more fitting city title be "New PORK City?" I'm just saying. 

So, anyway, King Pig is mad and they spot a reporter from the Eagle's Eye newspaper, Mighty. Mighty suggests that King Pig doesn't rule everything yet (so then what DOES he rule?!) and can't control the press. So, King Pig does what any vile mastermind would do...threatens to take an item off the menu unless he gives the Angry Birds a bad rap! :O

The sign of a truly powerful monarch, everyone. 

Mighty sends the raven we saw before to go out and grab us some exposition, I mean profiles, so they can write a feature. And so, we're given little tidbits about each hero. Chaser is a speedster, Red (seriously, the red bird's name is freaking RED) is the brazen leader with no personality, Volatile is our pseudo-firestorm, and Thunderbird is Superman. Er, at least, what everyone interprets Superman to be: bland and super strong. 

While this going on, the group is stopping various attacks throughout the city that stem from the clock tower coming down. What? How'd that happen? How does a clock tower just have some sort of explosion out of nowhere? Who attacks a clock tower?! Was it the one harboring the Time Force Rangers, is that why? I think they could handle themselves. 

Anyway, the group leaves, pushing the police pigs around that were a little slow to react to the chaos, telling them to up security. 

Um, you know they can arrest you, right? 

I think my biggest issue with the book stems from this, as well as the concept of the King Pig. What we're seeing here is essentially four super heroes with powers we see all the time simply fighting an idiotic ruler for the sake of doing so. There's little conflict outside of them having a bad rap from the press but even then that came about because Mighty didn't want his favorite food taken off the menu. 

Nothing separates this book from a different super hero story, or, more importantly, a better super hero story. Sure it has a more light-hearted tone but that doesn't mean it has to sacrifice its story elements for that. There are dozens of great light-hearted super hero comics out there from years past and this could have been a nice refresher, albeit goofy, into those types of stories, rather than a bland one. If it's going for a comedic edge, I'm not seeing it either. 

So, with the Raven following them--even implying he attacked the clock tower so what the heck?--they return to their secret base! 

Oh you have got to be joking! A greenhouse on top of a condo, seriously? And they expect nobody to notice THAT in New York City? Not to mention that these are high-profile vigilantes going to a greenhouse in BROAD DAYLIGHT. 

They don't make them like they used to. 

Here we see the return of that hen from the pizza shack, Matilda, who serves as a motherly figure for them as well as a way for them to just recoup after a mission. We learn that Matilda actually has some sort of chemical warfare strategy in place for the birds...which is weird, before Chaser finds the raven snooping away. 

Mighty Eagle arrives and the birds try to defend their case before being ambushed by pigs that are subsequently taken down. The pigs tell them that they are essentially screwed since the raven has all the info on them that he needs to expose them to the public, even though he has learned nothing bad about them at all throughout the issue. 

When the birds return to the base, we learn that Matilda and Mighty actually used to be romantically involved before going their separate ways once the King Pig moved in and crushed any opposition to oppose him. So, then, where were the Angry Birds then? Where did they even come from? 

The Raven arrives and hands them a preview of the paper, suggesting they split town early. Matilda goes to see Mighty, telling them that he has it all wrong. Might gives her a contemplative look. 

Thus the comic comes to a close with an article being published in the paper for all pigs to stay away from the greenhouse, meaning the Angry Birds get to stay there for a little while longer, and nothing really having been accomplished.

This is a very odd comic in almost every way possible, minus the artwork. The art by Ron Randall is fine, it does everything it needs to for the story as well as keeps the colors rich and makes no character look the same. When he can make Red and Thunderbird distinguishable, he's done a good job. There were no great hiccups in the artwork, too, and it didn't feel so phoned in. 

Jeff Parker's writing, however, is a bit of a different story. He's written good things before, namely some work with Batman '66, which is comedic. This, though, isn't very fun nor is it particularly interesting. Maybe this is a comic meant for kids, but, it isn't really advertised as such. I think kids would get much more of a kick out of this than an adult who has read the big super hero epics and has seen almost all kinds of heroes that there are. 

The problems are that there isn't much history behind what is happening and whatever history there is seems forced and meant solely to match what is happening in the story. The villain is weak, the heroes are essentially cardboard cutouts, and the rules of the world aren't  well defined. Still, I can't call this a truly bad comic. The concept alone is weird and while things do go off the rails a bit once we have the action sequence to save the clock-tower, it's still just interesting to think that the Angry Birds are actually a superhero team in New York City. 

Next time, though, the craziness continues as we catch up on what our buddy Doomsday is up to as Superman goes to see what's up in "Superman #74." 

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