The Great British Bump-Off #1 & 2
Reviewed by Will Morgan 22-Jun-23
Good glaze, stale interior, soggy bottom.
Max Sarin’s art is charming and nuanced a delight to look at, and perfectly suited to comedy. If only there’d actually been much comedy.
The Great British Bump-Off #1 & 2, by John Allison and Max Sarin (Dark Horse Comics)
I’ll confess, I love a good pun as much as the next man; a bad one, even more. So when I saw the title of this murder mystery set in the world of televised competitive baking, I succumbed to the impulse and picked up the first two issues of four.
That’ll teach me.
Our point of view character is Shauna Wickle, a participant in the UK Bakery Tent series, as one of her fellow competitors is poisoned, and she sets out to impress the judges with her croquembouche while discovering which of her fellow bakers has given a new meaning to ‘elimination tournament’. So far, so light and fluffy; but it just fails to rise.
One reason is the lack of character development in the multitude of competitors, judges and presenters. A few stand out, but the majority are still firmly grounded in the ‘mildly daffy young female’ trope, with only hairstyle and colour significantly differentiating them.
Another is the, frankly, often bizarre dialogue. If it was an American writer, I’d chalk it up to the US’ usual tone-deaf attempts at ‘proper’ English, from folks who take the Austin Powers movies as documentaries; but, looking him up, I find that writer John Allison is English, which leaves the number of odd idioms, never, I’m convinced, actually said by anyone on planet Earth, inexplicable.
Artist Max Sarin’s work is charming; exaggerated without being grotesque, nuanced perception of body language and facial expression, a delight to look at, and perfectly suited to comedy. If only there’d actually been much, you know, comedy.
What there is mostly revolves around allegedly funny misunderstandings, such as an overplayed ‘shock’ reaction to the phrase ‘keeping your pecker up’—which Americans might be startled by, but the purportedly British protagonists wouldn’t even blink at. There are, to be fair, two deliciously scathing lines, one per issue, each delivered by one of UKBT’s celebrity judges, Fanny Cradock, (and seriously, how many people under my age of sixty-five are even going to remember her?) but it’s little reward for going through so much stodge.
The slight concept might have been sufficient for a one-off, but at half-way through the four-issue run, it’s just collapsing on itself. It would be easy, and lazy, and so, so obvious to describe the entire exercise as ‘half-baked’. But hey, if the choux fits…