As teased last month, DC Comics has released a short film starring Chip Zdarsky to promote its April Fool’s Day special MAD About DC.
Directed by Sean McLeod, who previously worked with Zdarsky on his 2022 series Chipclass, the five-minute short sees the writer promote the comic by rattling off the names of its contributors, while running around dressed as the Flash. However, he soon runs out of breath, and events escalate from there, as he proves woefully unequipped to engage in actual superheroics, and gets arrested and interrogated by a cop (Isaac Towell) who has a bone to pick with some of his work for DC.
On his Substack, Zdarsky thanks DC “for letting us be morons,” and states that, “No, I did not know my body looked like that” while in-costume. McLeod’s brother, artist Kagan McLeod, also makes an appearance as Jerry, the good cop to Towell’s bad cop Barry. Further cast members include Canadian Comedy Award winner Chris Locke (Wayward) as the mugger, Henry Tran as his victim, and MAD mascot Alfred E. Neuman as “himself.” Additionally, Matt Fraction gets a shout out as the copyright owner of Zdarsky.
MAD About DC is available from all comic book stores and online now. As the film helpfully outlines, it features contributions from Fraction, Skottie Young, Tini Howard, Mark Waid, Gerry Duggan, Tony Moore, Kyle Starks, Cody Ziglar, Joe Kelly, Scott Aukerman, Mitch Gerads, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Gail Simone, Colleen Doran, Valentine De Landro, Joe Quinones, Joshua Williamson, Javi Fernandez, Sergio Aragonés, Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Scott Snyder, Vita Ayala, James Harren, Mariko Tamaki, Leah Williams, Al Ewing, Mark Russell, Steve Lieber, Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, Jeff Parker, Charles Soule, Ryan Browne, Rainbow Rowell, and Seth Meyers.
(There’s even more contributors, but unfortunately Zdarsky got arrested before he or the cops could name-drop them all.)
