Inspector Gadget #1

Oct-Nov 1987 Cover price 75p
48 pages. Full color contents.
Marvel Comics, Ltd.

Cover by (uncredited).
r: UNKNOWN.

Contents:

 2 Go Go Gadget text introduction (uncredited).

 3 Inspector Gadget The Art Gallery... w: UNKNOWN; a: UNKNOWN.

r: UNKNOWN.

47 Next Issue (one third page).

48 Marvel Goes Mad in-house advertisement for Inspector Gadget and Madballs.

Inspector Gadget should be one of the easiest sells in tie-in history, with an immensely popular cartoon which ran throughout the eighties and nineties despite concluding production in 1986. The cartoon's immediately identifiable logo, with an inverted Gadget included in the design, is rougher than it should be, in a manner which would appear more at home on a knock-off video. Someone noticed, and fixed, these issues for the Summer Special, but it shouldn't have shipped with this in place.

The cover illustration, adding to negative first impressions, isn't an iconic image of Inspector Gadget - which instantly deflates hopes for this issue. The third issue, annoyingly, has a cover which would have been perfect to launch a title with. When the star of a franchise has a unique selling point, that aspect should be highlighted. Here, Gadget appears to be some sort of human-shaped balloon rather than an action-comedy hero.

Using "Go go No. 1" on the cover is another thing to take care of. If you have children, or there are children in your family, show the cover to them. Go on, I'll wait. It's remarkably easy to predict what this line will elicit, and it isn't excitement at the first issue of the series - you're likely going to hear a poop joke. How did this cover get past the eyes of so many people in production without eyebrows and questions being raised?

The introduction page is precisely the opposite of what a good intro should look like, with an extremely off-model illustration of Gadget being the worst offence against readers eyes, though breaking the text into two sections is inexcusable. Surprisingly, the spot-illustrations of Penny, Brain, and Chief Inspector Quimby are fine, indicating that artists who could render accurate representations of the characters were available.

The Art Gallery... takes up the entire comic, languidly telling its story - with multiple redundant panels, a fair number of which are annoyingly tilted for no reason. This is an awful waste of space in a comic which had ample opportunity to exploit a ready-made audience's love of these characters. No features on the various gadgets, no puzzle pages, no humour... A disastrous first issue, with little to redeem it.