Raise your fins if you remember Fish Police!

No one does, right? Yet Fish Police has quite a history, even going as far as to get its own (admittedly short-lived) star studded animated adaptation. Even the front cover of this first issue says ‘as seen on TV!’. Seriously, check out the cast members mentioned on the Fish Police Wikipedia page: Ed Asner, John Ritter, Tim Curry, Hector Elizondo, Buddy Hackett, Megan Mullally, Robert Guillaume and JoBeth Williams.

Fish Police began life as an indie comic, created (as well as written and drawn) by Steve Moncuse back in 1985. Initially self published (under the Fishwrap Productions banner), it was picked up, reprinted and even partly colorised by publisher Comico, who unfortunately went bankrupt a few years later. Apple Press were next to publish Fish Police, and Marvel Comics re-published the first six issues of the series, albeit in colour, around the time that it was adapted for TV, and it’s the first issue of this run that I’m checking out.

It’s a very odd comic; there’s a ton of fish-related puns, but the characters and their setting don’t need to be aquatic creatures for the purpose of the story at all.

The unattractive character design (possibly even elements of the noir-esque story) seems to have, at least partially, influenced the utterly cursed 2004 Dreamworks movie Shark Tale; they’re anthropomorphic in a really ugly way, though admittedly the art style in Fish Police is really nice, particularly for what was originally a mid-80s indie comic.

It’s not all bad though; as a noir pastiche, it clearly knows what it’s doing, and even though most of the jokes elicit groans rather than laughs, a few of them do land.

I picked Fish Police up on a whim, having discovered it in a bargain box at Dave’s Comics in Brighton, and I was too intrigued to let it stay there, having never once heard of it before. I’m not sure I’m intrigued enough to track down the rest of the six issue series, but it was an interesting diversion at least.

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