The Muppets Noir #4
Writer and Artist: Roger Langridge
Colorist: Dearbhla Kelly
The moment of truth.
All of the puzzle pieces fit together perfectly, finally giving us the picture from the missing box (those things really should come with instruction sheets).
It’s time to blow this case wide open.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Unsolvable Mysteries
A good Muppets comic can be tough to pull off. So can a good noir story. So to be able to pull off both for four issues, and stick the landing, is no small flipper—er, I mean feat.
Flip Minnow has figured out that the missing Meringue isn't missing at all—she's been all over the place, crossing paths with him through a slew of different disguises. But the question remains: why?
Well, since she's portrayed by Miss Piggy, the answer should be obvious: she wants to be a STAR!
Soon, all of the players are assembled, the cards are on the table (fancy a game of Go Fish?), and the truth finally comes out.
A surprise twist leads to a Piggy in peril, and Flip has to overcome his pie "problem" in order to save the pig who's so thoroughly entranced him...
Here’s Looking at You, Pig
This series has been a grand old time from start to finish.
The central mystery was pretty basic overall, but it wasn’t meant to be very complex. The real heart of the matter was why Meringue was missing, not where she was. And the answer was true to Miss Piggy’s overly theatrical nature.
There weren’t as many gags flying all over the place this issue, but it had a lot of work to do in bringing the pieces of the puzzle together and driving events towards a conclusion. Kermit had to wake up eventually, after all. Much of the humor here was in the form of payoffs to earlier bits—for example, Officer Eagle’s obsession with ticketing actually led directly to the final set piece here. That’s just good writing, to take a background joke and make it the trigger point for the big finale.
There’s more time spent in the “real world” Muppet Theater this issue, as the main cast tries anything they can to wake Kermit. Seems the show has gotten more out of hand than usual in his absence—I know that sounds hard to believe, but it’s true. Statler and Waldorf even said so.
If you read Flip's "condition"—blacking out whenever he smells pie—as an allegory for alcoholism, then his Big Hero Moment here becomes both a triumph and a tragedy.
It's a triumph because he fights through it to rescue Meringue from the burning pie factory. But it's also tragic, because it suggests that pie might be back on the menu for him, if you get my meaning.
Slightly weightier stuff than you'd expect from a Muppets comic, right?
It’s Time to Play the Music
Roger Langridge certainly knows his Muppets, that’s for sure. His work on this series, both as writer and artist, has been so authentic to both the Muppet and the noir parts that I had to go and hunt down his earlier works.
In the real-world sequences, he perfectly captures the chaos of a Muppet Theater production without the guiding flipper of Kermit. Much of the issue’s visual gags are contained in these scenes, and they certainly make this particular show a memorable one. In the noir sequences, the background gags are greatly reduced, as all of the cast converge on the same locations in order to bring the story together. That doesn’t mean these scenes are boring, though—far from it. There’s action and danger, even as everyone gathers together. And there’s a musical number within a burning factory where the flames are the ones singing! That’s got to be a first.
Dearbhla Kelly’s colors lean heavily into the noir grays this issue, with almost every background in the dream world being a shade of it. The characters themselves remain their colorful selves, standing out in a world obsessed with black-and-white morality. That's the Muppets in a nutshell: messy, emotional, chaotic creatures crashing headfirst into genres that demand certainty. It’s almost as if Kermit’s mind is starting to realize how absurd it all was as he got closer to waking up… Might make a good Muppet Show production, hmm?
The Show Must Go On
The Muppets Noir #4 brings the series to a close by solving the mystery with a very Miss Piggy twist, and a triumphant moment at the end that could also be considered tragic if you really think about it. The gags only come half-a-mile-a-minute this time around, but the story being told is a solid one. This series has been an absolute delight from start to finish, and I'm already chomping at the bit for whatever story Roger Langridge decides to tell with these characters next.