Clue issue 6

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Clue #6
Clue6-cvrA.jpg
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published November 22, 2017
Cover date November 2017
Written by Paul Allor
Art by Nelson Dániel
Letters by Neil Uyetake
Editor Carlos Guzman

The strange game that our guests have been entangled in comes to its truly shocking end.

Synopsis[edit | edit source]

The storm has passed, and the police have arrived at the manor of Mr. A. Boddy. Detective Amarillo meets with her colleague Sergeant Zargah to bring in her key suspect Mr. Green, noting that two other persons of interest — Professor Plum and Dr. Orchid — went into the river, and will have to be searched for downstream. Despite Green's protests of his innocence and misogynistic contempt for Amarillo, he is escorted out of the house to a waiting police car.

Professor Plum reawakens from being knocked out by Dr. Orchid, in the care of Mr. Boddy — or, as he's really called, Dr. Black. Black advises that Plum not try to leave, as the building is swarming with police officers, and asks how the scientist figured out his true identity; Plum explains that he had initially assumed that Mr. Green was behind the blackmail and leaking of secrets, thanks to it being "up his very slimy alley", but came to realise that it didn't fit, as Green would never do the work himself instead of getting subordinates to do it for him. As such, there was only one man that Plum could think of with the motive and means to carry out the blackmail: the infamous, reclusive CEO of Black Pharmaceuticals. Plum is impressed with the brilliance of Black's plan, but it hasn't entirely gone as intended: Miss Scarlett, hired only to provide the evening with entertainment, is dead. As Black, Orchid and Plum make their way out of the building through a secret passageway, Plum is shocked to discover that Black is Orchid's father (and that he calls her "Orchid")...

Orchid's birth parents were scientists working for Dr. Black, and after their deaths in a laboratory accident, he adopts her as his own daughter. Growing up, Orchid learns the art of chemistry, while Black takes an interest in the young Plum and arranges for him to recieve scholarships and jobs that will lead him in "the right direction". As adults, Dr. Orchid and Professor Plum come to work together on finding a way to grow the Surobi Zinnia in captivity, but realise that they will need a much higher sample than government regulations will allow. When Orchid informs her father of this, he organises a mercenary raid on the sole known field of the flowers in Afghanistan... led by a man who will come to assume the identity of Mr. Boddy's faithful butler, Upton.

Making their way through an underground tunnel away from the manor, Plum realises the true genius of Black's plan: the world will think that Mr. Boddy is dead, but "Mr. Boddy" and "Upton" don't really exist, leaving the events as a bizarre mystery. Plum rejects Orchid's plea for him to "join their family", but agrees to work for Black for the money and the chance to work with Surobi Zinnia again — and because he knows that Black will kill him if he refuses. Dr. Orchid apologises to Plum for her ommissions of information, but promises that she didn't lie to him... with one exception. Orchid did kill Mrs. Peacock with a candlestick, after she bragged that her killing of her husband brought Black's blackmail to an end.

In Detective Amarillo's police car, Mr. Green begins to angrily rant at her, but is suddenly stopped when he vomits into his hands. The detective quickly pulls over and Green staggers out, falling to his knees in severe gastric distress... because before the meal that began their evening, Dr. Orchid slipped a chemically enhanced laxative into his food as she always joked she would, ensuring him a very uncomfortable night.

Upton is very fed up with the constant use of flashbacks as a narrative device, particularly the last one — a flashback inside a flashback. With that, every plot thread has been neatly tied up... or so it seems, for every murder mystery leaves an obvious set of witnesses. But Upton has been ordered to clean up after himself: no clues, and no witnesses... and so, he climbs out of the panel of the comic he is in, and into the office of Carlos Guzman, the comic's editor! The shocked editor offers to revise his work, taking out the flashbacks and starting over, but Upton is unswayed and — after a brief scuffle — sends Guzman falling out of his window, choked by his own laptop cord. Next, Upton moves on to letterer Neil Uyetake in the same building, slitting his throat before making his way to the Chilean home of artist Nelson Dániel, who he takes out with his own pen! The last one alive is author Paul Allor, confused as to why he's scripted a comic about his own death... as Upton puts it, "it's a mystery".

With the comic's entire creative team dead, the narrative seems to be concluded. But Upton turns to the viewer and reaches out... because, after all, he did say "no witnesses"...

Featured characters[edit | edit source]

Characters in italics are shown only in flashback. (Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

Suspects Detectives Others IDW Publishing

Quotes[edit | edit source]

"We've got murders in the study. The library. The great hall. The conservatory. Using revolvers. Lead pipe. Knives. Even a wrench."
"My God..."
"Yeah. Like they're all just players in some strange game."

Detective Amarillo and Sergeant Zargah

"And you would have figured out I was telling the truth if you weren't so... so genetically ill-suited for this job!"
"Yeah, well, you and your big brain are going to prison. And as for me? I'm gonna go home, and sleep with my wife."
"Shake, rattle and roll, detective!"

Mr. Green is shut down by Detective Amarillo and Sergeant Zargah

"Dr. Black is your father? And your father calls you Orchid?"
"Yes. And yes. I had a very strange childhood."

Professor Plum and Dr. Orchid

"One down. And as luck would have it, my next target works in this very s ame buidling"
""S ame buidling"? Who's editing this — Oh. Right.

Upton learns that you can't remove a comic's editor without consequence

Notes[edit | edit source]

Suspect tracker[edit | edit source]

And so, the mystery is over. Let's run down the conspiracy and the murders, shall we?

  • Dr. Black, in the assumed identity of Mr. Boddy, apparently arranged the entire scheme to eliminate his competition and recruit Professor Plum; this involved faking his own death by gunshot.
  • Mrs. Peacock was killed by Dr. Orchid with a candlestick, acting on Black's orders. As it turns out, Peacock did kill her husband, Ambassador Peacock.
  • Senator White and Colonel Mustard killed each other over their past differences with a makeshift knife and a wrench, respectively. White also killed Detective Ochre with a lead pipe.
  • Mr. Green didn't kill anyone, but is assumed to be the killer thanks to the death of Miss Scarlett — who wasn't there for any reason relating to the conspiracy, and wasn't even murdered, having fallen to her death by accident!
  • And of course, our omniscient narrator Upton was responsible for tying off our loose ends by killing the book's entire creative team, as well as you, the viewer. Oo-er.

Continuity notes[edit | edit source]

  • Black and the young Orchid watch the same video of young Plum that was shown in issue #2.
  • Upton is revealed to have been the leader of the mercenaries that raided the Surobi Zinnia field in Afghanistan, back in issue #3.
  • The conversation between Orchid and Plum in issue #1 over whether she "did it" turns out to have been about her adding laxative to Green's food to "show he's full of —". (And even if he wasn't the killer, we can't say it's undeserved.)
  • Upton and Carlos Guzman have been breaking the fourth wall at each other throughout the comic. Might've been a bad move, Carlos!

Clue references[edit | edit source]

  • Whaaaat? Mr. Boddy is revealed to be a false identity constructed by Dr. Black. (Presumably the "a body" pun was intentional in-universe!) Dr. Black is traditionally the murder victim in the British Cluedo, taking the role that Mr. Boddy plays in the American Clue.
  • The exchange between Amarillo and Zargah in the opening scene is a beautiful homage to the third variant ending of the 1985 Clue movie, in which "I'm gonna go home, and sleep with my wife" was the last line of the movie version of Mr. Green — revealed in the third ending to have been an FBI plant the whole time. In an amusing flipping of scenarios, the comic version of the line is delivered by a lesbian, while in the movie it came from a man who had been feigning being gay for the whole film. Zargah's line cements the homage — the song "Shake, Rattle and Roll" played over the credits of the movie.
  • Green's insistence on his own innocence may also be a nod to the movie, in which Mr. Green repeatedly claimed that he "didn't do it".
  • Ludo University is named after the board game Ludo. Cluedo, the original name of this series' titular game, was a portmanteau of "Clue" and "Ludo".
  • Black notes that he chose the manor specifically for its hidden passages and escape routes, a reference to the secret tunnels in the board game that allow players to jump to the other side of the board.

Other references[edit | edit source]

  • Though they go unnamed in the comic, IDW Chief Creative Officer Chris Ryall and IDW Publisher Ted Adams make cameos in the IDW offices after Upton kills Carlos Guzman. This was confirmed by Paul Allor on Twitter.
  • Multiple Judge Dredd comics can be seen in Nelson Dániel's home; Dániel has drawn issues of IDW's Judge Dredd series in the past. Similarly, a picture of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Leonardo is hanging on Paul Allor's wall, as Allor wrote for IDW's TMNT.

Covers (3)[edit | edit source]