***THIS REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE NERD BLITZ PATREON***
This is another one of those wacky books that I know absolutely nothing about but good ol Fitz got simply because I’ve been doing these comic reviews.
And it’s not just a run of the mill Marvel or DC book, this is creator-owned, meaning off the beaten path and interesting.
He, Fitz, also knows how much I dig detectives that fit within those parameters, so this could either be really fun and give me a new character to obsess over or be a complete and utter train wreck.
I’m game to find out, gang, and I hope you are too!
As always, this is your official ***SPOILER ALERT***
Cover By Barry Crain? (No explict credit is given for the cover): Highly detailed, stylized, and Noir-ish, with a side of the cliche detective style clothing you can recognize at a glance.
I dig it, from the jump this looks like a book that may well have a quirky and fun sense of humor.
In a way, it feels evocative of 50s Sci-Fi and 50s Pulp Detective stories all in one hit.
I hope the rest of the book can live up to the high bar that this cover is setting!
Art By Barry Crain: While not as slick and polished as the cover, still just as detailed.
It has a great grit, magnificent use of shadows, wacky caricature looking characters that fill out the world.
It really feels like the result of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac and the Addams Family if they were blended together.
More comic strip than comic book, but it works so well!
Story “The Further Adventures Of Lance Barnes, P.N.D.: Case #007: The Big Bang” By Stefan Petrucha: Chasing down a villian, a man runs out of bullets and pistol whips his nemesis.
With a clock ticking, the shadowy figure enters a control room and finds a taunting note telling him to chose a wire.
Chose correct, no problem.
Chose poorly and shit hits the fan.
The shadowed man…chose poorly…
Jumping ahead a couple years, we learn the man that fucked the world is our hero, Lance Barnes.
And he’s been hired, payment being canned peaches, by a man in a dog suit to get him off the hook and save him from the draconian courts.
Can Lance save The Dog Knight?
Yeah, I’m in.
This is Dan Shamble, but if the Big Uneasy had been launching nukes instead of bringing about monsters, and if Dan had cast the spell, in this case pressed the button, himself, with a little bit of Fallout mixed in for good measure.
It’s exactly the weird detective shit I love.
The characters are just as fuckin’ kooky and out there as I had hoped.
The Dog Knight and his search for a new sidekick to take up the mantel of “Puppy”, the cannibal in clown make-up, the old gun-toting widow who bakes pies one minute and fires buck shot into your ass the next, and that’s not even mentioning the mutant court assistants.
If you want out there, this is it!
The one complaint I would have is that I think this concept is a bit limited by the comic format.
30 pages just isn’t enough for me to feel like I’ve explored the world, it doesn’t breathe as much as I’d need to feel satisfied by it.
Maybe reading the other 3 issues along with it would help with that, but I doubt it.
It seems more laser focused on telling the story it wants to tell than building a universe.
All in all, it’s fun as hell!
But it leaves you wanting far more than it seems willing to offer.
It’s a good mesh of over the top art and strange story.
If that sounds at all appealing to you, snap up all 4 as soon as you can.
I know I’m gonna be on the look out now!
Special thanks to @ACFerrell1976 for her continued editorial assistance.
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