Clue: Candlestick

 
 
Clue: Candlestick

by Dash Shaw

IDW

2020

 

 

Clue: Candlestick is a graphic novels that collects the three issues of Shaw's comic miniseries. It's based on the boardgame, and Shaw incorporates imagery from the game (as well as mazes and other puzzles) throughout.

 
The first issue is told mostly from Prof Plum's perspective. Plum is very attentive to details, and so we get a lot of arrow notations pointing out little things in Shaw's drawings. Plum gets a letter from his friend Mr Boddy, saying that he wants to start giving away parts of his collection of infamous objects - a rope, a knife, a wrench, a revolver, a lead pipe, and of course, a candlestick. 

 
Plum shows up to Boddy's mansion on a dark and stormy night, along with Boddy's other friends - Col Mustard, Miss Scarlet, Mr Green, Mrs Peacock, and Boddy's maid, Miss White. Everyone is suspicious, there's a crack of thunder, and next thing you know, Col Mustard has been shot. Who could have done such a thing? Everyone splits up in pairs to go search the house.

 
The second, and I think best issue, is mostly from Miss Scarlet's perspective. Boddy has a huge collection of art depicting her. In flashback, we learn that Scarlet is an artists' muse who keeps killing her artists for vaguely feminist sounding reasons. During her search, Scarlet learns that Boddy knew what she was doing, and had been secretly helping her by partially cleaning the crime scenes.  By the end of the issue, Boddy is dead from the lead pipe, and Scarlet has been stabbed.

 
Issue three follows Mrs Peacock and Mr Green, who are secretly a couple. Peacock likes Before & After photos, so a lot of the panels in this issue come in pairs like that. Throughout the series, Shaw draws everyone except the main characters very cartoony. In flashback, we see that Peacock had a rich husband - the Monopoly man! Green killed the old guy with the candlestick, and Boddy added it to his collection. Plum and White accuse Green and Peacock of the recent murders just in time for the police to arrive and arrest them. But is that really what happened? (Spoiler - no, of course not.) We get the real solution right after, explained by the killer, while Green and Peacock are trapped in prison. But then the candlestick tips over at just the right moment, and exacts inanimate revenge.

 
This wasn't amazing, but it was kind of interesting. I liked how Shaw incorporated both bits of the original game, plus some codes, a nonogram with a clue, a memory quiz, and other fun details like that into the comic art. The mystery itself isn't all that interesting, but those metafictional art techniques make the whole enterprise more fun.