The Three Tools of Death

"Professor Peach, in the library with the lead piping?"

"Doctor Who: The Unicorn and the Wasp"

Obviously, Japanese comics are often featured here, but I have also reviewed Dutch and Italian comics here before. I do think however this is the first time I'm doing an American comic...

And most readers will probably have noticed I also like playing videogames, but it may surprise some I have no affinity whatsoever with board and card games. Yes, they're games too, but the experience is so completely different, and I simply never got into board games. I guess that gamebooks are the closest I ever got on this blog. I do know there are also interesting mystery-themed board games out there. Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is probably one of the best known board game/gamebook hybrids. Funnily enough though I haven't played the original game, but I have played the videogame adaptation of it...

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Cluedo, or Clue as it's known in the US, is probably the best known mystery board game in existence. Until only a few weeks ago, I never realized the title Cluedo is read "clue-dough" actually. I haven't seen television commercials for this board game in ages, but when I was a kid, they always pronounced it as "clue-ay-dough" in the commercials over here, so that's how I always called the game in my mind. Anyway, I've always known roughly how the game worked from seeing it in pop culture references, and phrases like Colonel Mustard In The Kitchen With The Wrench were familiar to me, but I never played the game myself or even seen in in real life. And nope, I haven't seen the 1985 Clue film. Anyway, I personally have no bond with the board game, so perhaps it might sound weird I decided to read and review a comic adaptation of the board game, which if you think about it, must be a very niche product.

Yet, the reason is very, very simple. For soon after Dash Shaw started his three issue comic Clue: Candlestick in 2019, I saw a lot of positive reviews popping up, praising it as a captivating mystery comic, one that did justice to the whodunit aspect of the game. So when the trade paperback was released late January 2020 (collecting all three issues), I didn't hesitate to pick it up, even if I didn't really know the original board game that well myself. But even to newcomers to Cluedo, the set-up must sound very familiar as a detective story: the story starts with Professor Plum receiving a letter from his friend Mr. Boddy, who says that of late, he's been receiving death threats. Boddy thinks it may be wise to prepare for the worst case, and make sure the key pieces in his unique crime collection, which includes the knife of Jack the Ripper, the revolver that assassinated President Garfield and more, go to people who can appreciate it. Boddy and his housekeeper Mrs. White receive Professor Plum, femme fatale Ms. Scarlet, auction master Mrs. Peacock, war veteran Colonel Mustard and the shady businessman Mr. Green in Boddy's grand manor, but Colonel Mustard is shot during dinner. As it's not clear whether Mustard was shot by someone at the table or a third party from outside the dining room, they decide to split up and search the manor, but the killer is not done yet. Can the survivors figure out whodunit before it's too late?

Even to someone who has no history whatsoever with the original board game, Clue: Candlestick is an interesting. The art is unique (note the board game space motif!), often tense, but at times deformed to 1930s newspaper comic style on purpose, which goes really well with the black comedy found within the pages. While the characters in the original board game are of course little more than caricatures with some minor profile details, the suspects are fleshed out into far more interesting characters in this comic (issue 2 for example is mostly about the backstory of Ms. Scarlet), providing the characters with motivation and agency. I guess fleshing things out was a theme for Shaw, as even the six weapons used in the board game are given backstories, reimagining them as actual murder weapons which have been used in the past and found their way into Mr. Boddy's collection of crime. It's Shaw's own unique interpretation of the Cluedo world, but that is what makes this comic accessible, as it does not rely on decade-old lore.

Given the source material, it's only natural that Shaw decided to set Clue: Candlestick up as an interactive experience, a murder mystery where the reader is invited to think along, and while I do think the concept is really fun, the execution is also slightly flawed. I guess the thing that comes closest to the concept of Clue: Candlestick is the Professor Layton videogame series, in the sense that the narrative is sometimes 'interrupted' by puzzles that at times do feel disjointed from the actual story. For example, Clue: Candlestick opens with a scene where Professor Plum hears a sound coming through the window. As Plum narrates "Lying in bed, awake, I imagine the path the wind takes through my bedroom" we see how the wind apparently goes through a maze before it reaches Plum. Not only is this a maze puzzle, but it does work really well in showing off how Plum's mind works. At other times though, the puzzles feel a bit unnatural, for example when you're suddenly asked to recall some details from the previous page without turning back.

Ultimately, the mystery of whodunit is also treated as an interactive experience, but it doesn't really work well. At the end of Issue 2, the reader is challenged by the message "You can solve the mystery before the third issue if you do all of the puzzles in issues one and two, and if you have a "Clue" game board for reference... Good luck!". Technically, this is true, but as a mystery story, it's not really satisfying. The most important hint to allow you to pinpoint the murderer is hidden within a puzzle is completely disjointed from the narrative, while you also actually need the Cluedo game board for reference if you want to solve it in issue 2. Which obviously, is not included with this comic. Hiding an essential clue in a puzzle that has nothing to do with the story, and also requiring information from outside the story, is not really fair. What's absolutely odd however is that Clue: Candlestick could've been made a much fairer experience: some scenes seen in issue 3 do make this a fair mystery puzzle, but as you only get to see them in the last issue, you can't use that information in issue 2. Had those scenes been moved to the second issue, Clue: Candlestick would've worked so much better. Also, I think it's really a shame how that vital clue was only hidden inside the puzzle. At the start of the story, there's a puzzle that shows how everyone searched the manor (the order in which they visited the rooms). But even if you didn't solve the puzzle based then, you could also figure the order out by paying attention to the artwork, as Shaw also shows in the backgrounds how the characters moved around. So you could either try the puzzle out, or work the thing out through the story. This isn't the case with the vital clue, which can only be obtained through the puzzle which is completely disjointed from the rest, so that feels very cheap. The whodunit aspect is by the way not extraordinary surprising (in fact it's quite simple), but the concept as an interactive experience is interesting. I guess that players of Clue will have an edge here, something that could've been prevented with some simple scene shuffling.

As a standalone mystery comic, Clue: Candlestick is perhaps not completely fair, which is a shame as relatively simple changes would've done wonders for it, by either pushing the Challenge to the Reader back or pulling some scenes to the front. And certainly don't expect Detective Conan or Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo-esque plots with some ingenious murder method or something like that. Ultimately, Clue: Candlestick is still an adaptation of the original board game, and I think that it does work mostly: the emphasis on character movement, fleshing out the character/weapon lore, the interactive aspect of the comic makes it feel like a comic board game and taken simply as a comic book story, the tale it tells is quite amusing. I definitely enjoyed reading it, even if it could've been even more fun with some minor changes.