Damage Control Vol 1 4 - Inferno

A flashback to the time Wolverine got a pie in the face.

Damage Control #4

Writer: Dwayne McDuffie
Penciler: Ernie Colon
Inker: Bob Wiacek
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: John Wellington
Editor: Sid Jacobson
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

Multiple construction sites have been raided with a large quantity of building materials stolen. The police turn to Damage Control to investigate and John Porter immediately spots a pattern so takes a team to investigate the site of the X-Mansion. John and Bart Rozum see rubble after its recent destruction but Robin Chapel, Lenny Ballinger, Gene Strausser and Albert Cleary see a mansion as normal and Robin remembers visiting before John and Bart joined the company. She remembers how Damage Control did repair work for Professor Xavier during which Gene fiddled with the electronics of the Danger Room. The members of Damage Control and the X-Men found themselves trapped in the room as a simulation of Groucho Marx led a stream of clowns in attacking them as they tried to reach the emergency controls to shut it down. Professor X declared that he had to protect knowledge of the Shi'ar technology in the Danger Room so he used his powers to remove Damage Control's memory and make them see nothing out of the ordinary at the house until their wills overcome it. Back in the present this has caused the team to not see the ruins until now. It transpires the Danger Room's systems are stealing the building materials to rebuild the mansion so they shut off the power. As the company hasn't been contracted it doesn't try to rebuild the mansion. The materials are returned and John tells the police he will maintain confidentiality, privately telling Robin the X-Men died as heroes and he wants to honour their memory.

"Inferno continues... interminably" proclaims a triangle on the cover but complicating matters is that this limited series was clearly delayed in publication with earlier issues featuring either the Avengers line-up of Dr Druid, She-Hulk, Thor and the Black Knight or the Thing in his extreme mutated "pineapple" form after both those were no longer the status quo in their own titles. Similarly here we get an Inferno issue four months after the event is over. To be honest this is more of a satire on the way some crossover events seemingly go on for ever rather than a forgotten part of the story that successive collected editions keep overlooking and I guess in 1989 this was more funny than "Secret Wars II continues in this issue" which at the time could still send people running for the hills.

Damage Control is a very tongue in cheek series, taking a serious concept such as how all the damage from superhero fights gets fixed so quickly and adding in a lot of satire. This first series starts by playing on the various conventions of superhero comics but then evolves into more general humour with the third issue poking fun at corporate publicity and stunts whilst this issue is mainly an excuse for slapstick comedy. Dwayne McDuffie would later admit one of his ambitions had been to throw a custard pie in Wolverine's face and he gets to do that here both on the cover (which wrongly depicts Wolverine in his costume from his solo series) and in the book, with Professor X declining to erase that memory. The flashback is played straight, an invariable consequence of the X-Men's current status quo that makes it difficult to do this sort of guest appearance in the present day, rather than parodying the way series often resort to this mechanism to insert extra adventures, usually emergency fill-in issues.

Overall this issue isn't trying to make any wider points about comic conventions or the industry or wider corporate practices. Even the way some characters use their powers to keep things secret for the public is played straight to force a flashback rather than explored as a means by which the illusion of the ordinary world is maintained. There's a moment where John immediately spots a pattern in the robberies that points to the site that nobody else can see which may parody contemporary amateur detective fiction that often had such moments of instant deduction but otherwise this is really just an excuse to get a pie into Wolverine's face and have him on panel with Groucho Marx. Inferno collected editions are missing nothing by not including it but it's a fun little tale nonetheless.