Panel Vision - Art of the Prank

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It’s April Fool’s Day, which usually means a day of disbelieving anything you see on the Internet but I’ve elected to celebrate the holiday a different way.  Rather than a fake review I’m looking back at one of my favorite super villains of all time through the lens of one of his few starring roles: Oswald Loomis- The Prankster.  Created in 1942 by Jerry Siegel and John Sikela, Prankster is one of the few non-powered villains in Superman’s rogues gallery and a proud member of the joke-themed villain cadre alongside the likes of The Trickster and the Joker. 

He’s been through a number of iterations, starting off as a cartoonishly fat character who’d go after Superman using deadly practical jokes and gags.  He also got somewhat re-imagined for the New 52 era but neither of those are the Prankster I’ve chosen to focus on today.  No, instead I’ll be looking at the Prankster of Superman #660 from 2007, written by Kurt Busiek with art by Mike Manley and Bret Belvins, color by Lee Loughridge, and letters by Rob Leigh. 

The Prankster of 2007 had been around for a while after undergoing a visual redesign in the late ‘90s and a conceptual redesign in the mid-2000s after DC’s Infinite Crisis reboot.  This version of the character, still sporting his lime green suit only now with a thinner look, shared an origin with his previous counterparts as a kid’s show host who’d lost his program and turned to crime.  However, in this iteration Prankster’s main criminal activity is playing elaborate pranks on Superman as a way to distract him from other people’s crimes. 

It’s a great idea that plays well on one of my favorite ideas in the superhero universe: a supervillain economy.  Supervillains tend to get the short shrift on development in people’s minds, mainly because they’re much more isolated characters in popular adaptations, but in the comics, the supervillain community is a vibrant and well-considered concept.  

It all springs out of comics ability to turn plot holes into strengths, with questions like “who finds these theme specific hideouts for supervillains?” or “who builds supervillain death traps?” that normally just poke holes in this universe turned into an excuse for well-written and engaging characters. 

In the case of Superman #660, this is actually a villain issue of the whole comic, which is something books will sporadically do and I always appreciate where the comic is written entirely from the villain’s point of view, giving us a little slice of life single issue story.  Entitled ‘The Art of the Prank,” this issue takes us through a couple days in the life of the Prankster, we see how he operates in Metropolis, getting clients, setting up his bizarre mix of public performance art and super crime, and what happens when someone crosses him. 

It’s a nifty little glimpse into a fun side character who otherwise might not be able to hold down an entire comic and a cool way to instill Prankster with more depth and identity without having to resort to tragedy or even cruelty.  It’s a story that lives up to its name in that it is about humor as an art and Prankster as the artist- after all, with his level of advanced technology, the only reason he has to not sell it and become rich is that he’s CHOOSING to live as a supervillain.  He pranks Superman at least partly because he loves the three-act structure and history of pranks and jokes and this is a chance to do that kind of shenanigans writ large for the whole world to see. 

The issue is also beautifully illustrated.  Manley and Belvins have a great command of scale that helps the issue pack a lot of action into 22 pages without ever feeling cluttered.  There’s a lot of great use of a single well developed central action panel backed up by a few smaller accent panels above and below it that really helps the book flow.  

It’s a breezy read that never gets too bogged down despite there being A LOT of text on the page a lot of the time.  They also do a great job with Prankster’s expressions, often getting a wide range of emotions and implications out of a simple look, which is all the more impressive given how cartoonishly one-note his original design was (it was era-appropriate.) 

Supervillain issues have a tricky task of making their subject sympathetic without taking away from their villainy and a lot of that ends up contingent on pitting them against someone the audience can dislike more but also on humanizing the character, which the artwork goes a long way to do.  

There’s a kind of performative smirk that Prankster adopts when he’s presenting himself as his host persona that absolutely sells his villainous nature but whenever it goes away we do get a glimpse of the more human person underneath his carefully manicured façade. 

However, if I was choosing the real standout of the issue it would have to be Lee Loughridge’s color work which is just phenomenal.  Coloring can often feel like the most thankless job in comics, the kind of thing people only notice when it’s bad even though it can take an already good book and make it something really special and this color work absolutely sings.  

It’s all about bright colors that complement each other to a scene without ever feeling garish or overpowering.  To a point, the bright colors almost feel like a broken off chunk of a different world.  His lime green suit makes for a great pop of the absurd during back alley dealings while matching perfectly to the deep reds and purples of his secret lair. 

It also creates a great visual contrast to the villain Nitro G, a 2-bit hood who wants to force Prankster into a partnership, whose colors are all muted and dulled out.  There’s also just a ton of great use of amber and golden colors during a pair of early morning scenes.  Rob Leigh’s lettering is also very good, most notably his choice of font for Prankster’s internal caption boxes.  

It’s this slightly more ostentatious font that still manages to convey emphasis, it looks the way a TV show host turned super villain would sound which is no small feat.  What’s more, the bold emphasized words in dialogue balloons never once feel out of place or misused as they so often can. 

‘The Art of the Prank’ is a fun little one-off story about a great version of a character who all too often feels underused or passed over.  Prankster holds a special place in my heart as a bad guy in it for the goofy potential rather than the kind of malice the Joker projects or the Trickster’s litany of conflicting reasons.  

He’s a showman, which feels oddly lacking in the ranks of DC supervillains and the way this issue balances his idealized artistic self and the true man underneath the act shows he can have genuine depth.  What’s more, I just love that it’s a comic that embraces the fact jokes, gags, and comedies actually do have complexity and artistry- that’s a rarity among serious discussion even today. 

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