Comic Review - Transformers: The Reign of Starscream

IDW's movie tie-in comics hadn't been able to ride the film's box office to some sort of wider casual audience or even been particularly well-received by fans but they had done decent business within context, selling in and around the same numbers as their G1 material (at the time, at least - each issue of their prequel series probably sold more copies than their combined Transformers output does now). While Transformers had done huge business at theatres a sequel wouldn't be due until 2009; IDW needed money though and decided to make their own. And these fuckwits have the word "Idea" in their name.

Comic Review - Transformers: Movie Adaptation

Back in the pre-video age if you loved a film rather than having home media or oldies channels was for kids to by a comic based on the film from Gold Key or Dell. Now, Gold Key and Dell weren't exactly renowned for groundbreaking material or high artistic pretensions, largely being concerned with instead profitability. Guess what IDW did while the first Transformers film was in the theatres even though it would be out on DVD officially within months (and illegally before that). Go on, fucking guess.

Comic Review - Transformers: Movie Prequel

No, not something fan-wanky bridging the gap between the second series of the cartoon and the hair metal-infested guilty pleasure of the final bow of the man behind Touch of Evil, but instead IDW's attempt to get the coin of the 2007 Michael Bay blockbuster in their pocket. Of course, the first thing anyone who's seen the 2007 movie will tell you is that its' got a prequel built into the first hour with endless exposition and flashback. But you have to remember the other thing built in to IDW - not only do they love money but they realise the bulk of their readers are as thick as pigshit. Fuck's sake, they put out a comic specifically to slowly explain Prowl having character development.

Comic Review: Transformers - Punishment

PUBLISHER: IDW (2014)

WRITER: JOHN BARBER

ARTIST: LIVIO RAMONDELLI

Note: this will probably be the last of the IDW reviews for the blog. I can't go on reading this shit, it is killing me.

Originally released as some sort of interactive Internet thing for young people in the mistaken belief fandom wasn't generally the wrong side of thirty and the younger ones were actually interested in IDW's output, Punishment was - like the Spotlight: Shit Overpriced Toy strand - written out of sequence for logistical reasons, like being able to give motion to characters' head exploding.

Comic Review: Northstar

PUBLISHER: MARVEL (1994)
WRITER: SIMON FURMAN
ARTIST: DARIO CARRASCO

If you put Simon Furman in charge of the sun it would stop coming up in 12 months' time. The man has been cancelled more times than a software update and in 1994, a year when mutants were so hot there was a Bishop solo series, he managed to get a mutant title canned. Alright, it was Alpha Flight and no-one had cared since Johnny Byrne stopped working on it but still, he got a Marvel mutant ongoing cancelled in the mid-nineties. Emerging from this feat was a four-part Northstar mini-series, presumably the company opting to test the character out as a viable solo spin-off and standing out a little due to the smart matching cover design philosophy. Jean-Paul had always been one of the less generic members of Alpha Flight, though as an arrogant speedy mutant he might have stood out a bit better if the company didn't already have Quicksilver doing most of that stuff. Of course, at this point Northstar had gone beyond Flying Canadian Quicksilver thanks to being outed as homosexual a couple of years before, becoming Flying Canadian Gay Quicksilver.

Comic Review: Tokyo Storm Warning

PUBLISHER: CLIFFHANGER (2003)
WRITER: WARREN ELLIS
ARTIST: JAMES RAIZ

Between contracts in 2003 Warren Ellis went through a brief phase of trying to write a 3-issue mini-series for every Wildstorm sub-imprint going; Red was probably the best known. For Cliffhanger - which mainly handled J Scott Campbell's Danger Girl - he crafted Tokyo Storm Warning, concerning a spate of giant monsters attacking Tokyo, faced by giant mystical robots. It's a clear homage to both the kaiju movies that most famously bequeathed Godzilla and super robot anime series. Ellis, robots, monsters and the pencils of James Raiz, who proved his pedigree for this sort of thing on Dreamwave's Transformers Armada - what could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, actually.

Comic Review: Transformers - Infestation

PUBLISHER: IDW (2011)
WRITERS: DAN ABNETT & ANDY LANNING
ARTIST: NICK ROCHE

In 2005 zombies were pretty damn hot in comics thanks to Marvel Zombies and with typical decisiveness IDW decided they wanted a bit of that several years later when it was all very much played out with Zombies v Robots, written by that twat Chris Ryall. In 2011 it was decided to use this as a springboard for IDW's cross-company "Infestation" event, which used their in-house titles CVO: Covert Vampire Operations and Zombies v Robots to launch zombies at their licenced properties, meaning a big crossover between Transformers, Star Trek, G.I.Joe and Ghostbusters that absolutely no-one reading those titles wanted to see. Handling this were Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, just ahead of writing "Heart of Darkness" but published at more or less the same time (and taking place at around the three-quarters mark of that series). The full crossover included a two-part Infestation series then several cadet series which I will not be reading under any circumstances, apart from the two-issue Transformers - Infestation mini.

Comic Review: Transformers - Heart of Darkness

PUBLISHER: IDW (2011)
WRITERS: DAN ABNETT & ANDY LANNING
ARTIST: ULISES FARINAS

For the umpteenth time IDW began to realise that their Transformers comics and their writers weren't actually going down too well and a rescue mission was needed. The solution to the ongoing's issues was to parachute in chair-sharing duo Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, who were sort-of the British Jeph Loeb in that they simply survived in the industry for a couple of decades and were arbitrarily elected as hot for a little while because no-one else was really doing much new either. Dan of course had cut his teeth writing out scripts for Simon Furman on the old British Transformers weekly before pairing up with John Tomlinson for the aggressively awful Knights of Pendragon series. His later partnership with Lanning had yielded runs on Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova for Marvel and Legion of Superheroes for DC, which was enough for IDW's online shills to act like Kurt Busiek had rocked up. They turned on them soon enough naturally as both are still just that bit too famous to do conventions but anyway, onwards. The pair first handled IDW's idiotic Infestation crossover before getting a four-issue follow-up mini named "Hearts of Darkness", with the plan being then that they work with Costa on the ongoing. How all three would squeeze on a chair I don't know.

Comic Review: Transformers - Ironhide

PUBLISHER: IDW (2010)
WRITER: MIKE COSTA
ARTIST: CASEY COLLER

IDW's first attempt at a solo 'spin-off' mini-series Bumblebee suffered from a catastrophic piece of mistiming, choosing a character who was too entrenched in the ongoing plot and at exactly the wrong time. Aside from which it wasn't all that bad; the problem with the Spotlight format had always been that it's fairly easy for any writer worth their salt to focus on one character and give them a bit more focus than might be allowed in a bigger arc, leaving them to come out the other side a richer character. The problem was always the plot - whether to keep it self-contained and end up with something inconsequential or whether to link it into something bigger and just be left with a regular issue with narration boxes.

Comic Review: Thunderbolt Jaxon

PUBLISHER: WILDSTORM (2006)
WRITER: DAVE GIBBONS
ARTIST: JOHN HIGGINS

Wildstorm/DC brought up the rights to the fabled comic wing of IPC/Fleetway in 2005 and promised a selection of new material and reprints (the main hitch in the latter being the absence and poor condition of most physical masters). The opening gambit was Albion, written by Leah Moore and John Reppion and maybe read or spellchecked or vaguely acknowledged by Alan Moore. This was a hugely clumsy attempt to "do a Watchmen" for the characters but while it was nice to see so many characters back in print after decades on the sidelines and it was nowhere near the desecration of the infamous 2000AD Holiday Special it's generally considered impolite to mention the whole thing now. Phase two was a pair of spin-off five part miniseries "from the world of Albion!" largely chosen by casting around for British Invasion creators who had fond memories and asking them if they wanted to write anything. Dave Gibbons answered the call and chose Thunderbolt Jaxon, but there were two major catches - he didn't want to draw it and apparently he didn't want to write about Thunderbolt Jaxon either. Jaxon was never quite in Fleetway's first echelon, mainly being limited to Comet and Knockout rather than the A-list and his big moment might well have been a whiny death in Grant Morrison's Zenith. He was left out of Albion and you get the impression it wasn't so much to keep him free for this mini but because the writers didn't know who he was.

Comic Review: Transformers - Last Stand of the Wreckers

PUBLISHER: IDW (2010)
WRITERS: NICK ROCHE, JAMES ROBERTS
ARTISTS: NICK ROCHE, GUIDO GUIDI

It's fair to say that in 2010 people were fed up with IDW. Simon Furman had been given unprecedented control and freedom when the publisher got the licence at the fag-end of 2005 and squandered it with a meandering three-year pile-up of dreadful storylines. Replacing him with Shane McCarthy upset the deluded who felt Furman's work was ever going to go anywhere and then upset the people who were up for a change when his All Hail Megatron arc rapidly went from being stupid fun to stupid stupid, and then successor Mike Costa's tenure got off to a very wobbly start. Something was needed to get the fans onside; the result was the recalling of fan-turned writer-artist Nick Roche, whose debut on Spotlight - Kup had been one of the few universally acclaimed pieces of output since IDW picked the licence up. Roche then roped in fellow Transmasters alumni James Roberts to help out on the script, to focus entirely on the Wreckers.

Comic Review: Transformers - Bumblebee

PUBLISHER: IDW (2009-2010)
WRITER: ZANDER CANNON
ARTIST: CHEE

Post-All Hail Megatron it was clear someone at IDW thought Optimus Prime was mined out and things needed shaking up; the drastically increased profile of Bumblebee after two successful films made him an ideal candidate to take over the central focus and try and claw back some readers. The problem was Bumblebee had after a few initial appearances been largely neglected by both Simon Furman and Shane McCarthy, both of whom who had stuck to the late-Marvel-era characterisation of "yeah he's not as small and useless as he was but actually he's still small and useless in the grand scheme of things but just quieter and in it less". So some work had to be done and one of these decisions was to run a four-part mini-series alongside the new ongoing to beef up his case. Unfortunately IDW seems to have neglected to tell the two titles' respective creative teams until some way down the line.

Comic Review: Union Jack - London Falling

PUBLISHER: MARVEL (2006-2007)
WRITER: CHRISTOS GAGE
ARTIST: MIKE PERKINS

Union Jack's first mini had somehow been released in 1998 and very welcome it was, with an added round of surprise coming from Ben Raab actually putting in a good shift on the script despite his form. However, after those three issues it was back to jobbing cameos for Joe Chapman (though an unsuccessful pitch would lead to Paul Grist's superb Jack Staff) until he turned up in as one of Allan Jacobsen's New Invaders alongside other long-established but semi-obscure characters such as US Agent, the original Human Torch and the Thin Man. While this only lasted nine issues it presumably put this four-issue series on the table to give the character another try-out.

Comic Review: City of Silence

PUBLISHER: IMAGE (2000)
WRITER: WARREN ELLIS
ARTIST: GARY ERSKINE

Marvel never really knew what to do with Warren Ellis when he arrived with them in the mid-nineties; someone clearly recognised his talent but also his incompatibility with much of the mainstream of the company's work. Thus he was given considerable freedom but only really in areas he couldn't create a huge amount of impact, notably being given the job of winding down the commercially unsuccessful 2099 universe and writing nihilistic Marvels flipside Ruins. It's probably around this time he and Gary Erskine (fairly fresh over the Atlantic after Knights of Pendragon and Warheads) originated Silencers for Epic, Marvel's subline for oddball projects that allowed creator-owned works but the label was in poor health, only really still existing to complete the Akira reprint (which, coincidentally, featured an additional work by Ellis in its' closing issue), and the work was never released.

Ellis retained copyright and the comic was eventually put out in 2000 as City of Silence when The Authority and Planetary were in full swing, with Gary Erskine (the planned original penciller) working on it. That the comic was out five years late sadly shows, though that's perhaps a compliment to Ellis' rapid evolution from a pretty decent and slightly weird British invasion writer to one of the finest in the industry. Some of the ideas for Silencers were clearly recycled and greatly refined into Transmetropolitan in terms of a nightmarish totalitarian future city that runs on arcane concepts and general sleaze, but it's City of Silence that comes off as the knock-off.

Not that it really deserves much better; the trio of Silencers (a sort of secret police-cum-vigilantes) are Frost, Litany and Gitane and all are basically cool freaks, never remotely bothered by any sort of threat, above it all and full of bitter quips. A languid, hedonistic trio with no real weaknesses make for dull company and a bare minimum of excitement as they just kill other weirdos left, right and centre. The three issues are riddled with squeamish, modish concepts like high-tech snuff porn trading and the like which all sounds curiously twee and strangely incontinent, just weird word combinations spat out by characters to try and make the reader squirm. Erskine's art is arguably more successful in this regard, and not just that he makes everyone all grimacing and lined permanently (Gitane has facial scars and I didn't even notice on the first read); his detailed work on the strange world hits the right note of discomfort and provides most of the successful intentional humour and queasiness.

It's possible the series is meant to be a send-up to some degree of future shock stories but if it is it falls largely flat; the absurdity isn't absurd enough and Ellis can write much funnier send-ups than this anyway. This feels like it's running on shock value and as an Epic comic in 1995 from the writer of Excalibur it probably would have caused a couple of ripples; now, though, it's one of the more minor works of a fine career and not really worth tracking down.

Comic Review: Heroes Reborn Part 12 - The Return

PUBLISHER: MARVEL, 1997
WRITER: PETER DAVID
ARTIST: SALVADOR LAROCCA

Produced totally in house, this was a four-part weekly mini coping with the matter of actualy physically returning the Fantatic Four and the Avengers to Earth-616. Written by proper writer Peter David and drawn by the excellenet Salvador Larocca it should have been a triumph but what's happening is a real mess. Most of the pertinent information is dumped in the recap of the first issue with the rest of it being about Franklin Richards (who isn't bad as comic kids go but is also not exactly great either) arguing for the survival of the world he created with the Eternal Ashema. It's something of a foregone conclusion that the snot-nosed little genius will convince her to save everyone and that our heroes will successfully traverse the journey back to their own world but really you'd hope for a better story to get there.

Franklin and Ashema's telegraphed dialogue - him trying to plead for the sanctity of all life, her seeing the big picture but wouldn't you know it gradually coming around - takes up far too much while the actual heroes are given a somewhat perfunctory role in it all. Franklin is able to project himself to Reed and Sue and tell them what's going on; they buy it and rapidly talk around everyone else. It would be a difficult thing to do well to be fair but that doesn't make it any easier to read as Tony Stark abandons Pepper or Cap leaves Bucky behind with no reason on the word of a kid from another universe. Amusingly the gathering of who's from the real world is conducted by Franklin from memory and he (or rather Peter David) gets it wrong by including several characters who weren't absorbed by Onslaught, including She-Hulk and several Inhumans (only Crystal, as a serving member of the Avengers, made the trip).

David throws in Spider-Man (a hapless passenger when the 616 Hulk and the HR Banner, separated in the battle with Onslaught, find themselves reunited) for no readily apparent reason beyond providing clunking exposition, which considering that sort of thing fills every avaliable narration box feels a bit needy. The one flash of innovation comes later on when Dr Doom attempts to betray everyone by taking Franklin back to the Heroes Reborn Earth, hoping to rule it unopposed. While Franklin is saved Doom does end up going back to set up a thread on what would become known as Counter-Earth that was occasionally revisited; this avenue full of potential, with the planet packed with villains created by Franklin and opposed only by a handful of heroes like Bucky and the Swordsman, would get the occasional visit but was sadly never fully explored. And there was a Jeph Loed Rob Liefield revisit to the whole Onslaught thing in 2006; you cannot pay me enough to read that.

It's an underwhelming end to an underwhelming experiment; the general feeling is that Marvel want to get these guys back in order as soon as possible and just get over the whole thing. The four titles would relaunch under the Heroes Return banner with tip-top creators including the magnificent Kurt Busiek, Alan Davis, George Perez, Mark Waid, Scott Lobdell and Sean Chen. 

The universe's more telling legacy might have been in the Ultimate universe which launched two years later. The Ultimate series made a clean break with the rest of Marvel's output and didn't replace the long-established originals, featured decompressed storytelling that gradually introduced both heroes and the updated versions of their supporting cast rather than the breakneck pace of the Heroes Reborn titles. Young, hip writing talent was recruited to match the stature of the artists rather than trying to revisit old glories. The result was hugely successful and while it inevitably began to collapse in on itself after a decade Heroes Reborn managed that in months, so the lessons would seem to have been learnt.

Comic Review: The Prisoner - Shattered Visage

WRITERS: DEAN MOTTER, MARK ASKWITH
ARTIST: DEAN MOTTER

The Prisoner was and is one of the all-time great TV shows, that simple. Transcendentally brilliant and a rare glimpse of genuine small-screen auteurism. As such any sort of remake or sequel is on a hiding to nothing, especially when the show's psychotic hardcore fandom comes into play. Quite why DC, always with a record of steering clear of property renting, decided to commission this four-issue sequel to such a beloved show isn't known, though it was possibly just to keep up work with designer and Mister X creator Motter, who was doing odd bits of work for them at the time. he was partnered with Askwith, owner of the Silver Snail comic shop and a superfan who'd also done occasional work for DC. The original four-issue series consisted of 48 page prestige instalments and was vetted by Patrick McGoohan himself.

It gets right into upsetting people by rapidly establishing that the notorious series finale "Fall Out" was a continuation of the drug-induced mental battle seen in penultimate episode "Once Upon a Time". Which, when you think about it, isn't a big problem. Firstly "Fall Out" is batshit crazy and it's not hard to imagine a lot of drugs were involved even with McGoohan's chaste reputation and secondly it was very clearly designed to kill the thing off, too nonsensical to answer questions but too sweeping to allow a follow-up. So really the only way to write a sequel is to work around it even if it seems joyless, and naturally this is a bit of a red flag to those who believe the TV show is tantamount to a gospel.

The basic premise, set at the time the comic was published in the late eighties, has some admirable innovations - Number Two (the Leo McKern version) has been imprisoned since the fall of the Village and published a tell-all memoir which has made the Village a hot commodity in the intel community once again. The Village has just one resident now, an aged, bearded Number Six who found the freedom to stay when everyone else evacuated. It's a neat immersion, superficially defeatist until we meet the man and find him undiminished. 

The intel plot works well and features some well-crafted new characters who fit nicely alongside the veterans, with main protagonist Alice Drake (there are several in-jokes as well as numerous references) engaging and intelligent after washing up in the Village and taken under Six's wing. Antagonist Thomas Drake also carries a lot of the narrative and does it well; the pair probably shade Six and Two in terms of page time which gives it a fitting sequel feel and gives their showings more power. What fun would a retread of the show have been anyway?

Motter & Askwith excel in the general presentation; the poster-like semi-abstract art, made with heavy photo-referencing, is unlike most comics seen at the time while the language is perfect. The spook stuff, full of titles and allusions, fits nicely with what we saw of the world of spies in the sixties show while everything Six and Two say can be heard in the voices of McGoohan and McKern. The plot is a little loose and towards the end seems in an indecent hurry after such a patient build-up and the book requires a couple of reads to really appreciate what's going on but it's worth it for the details which pop out a second time around.

It's not perfection and it's not to all tastes but Shattered Visage is a respectful follow-up. Whether you feel that the series needed any sort of follow-up is more the question; if you were happy with "Fall Out" and feel the show is sacrosanct it will do little to convince you otherwise. But as sequels go it';s likely to be as good as it gets.

Comic Review - Red Rover Charlie

PUBLISHER: AVATAR, 2014
WRITER: GARTH ENNIS
ART: MICHAEL DIPASCALE

Garth Ennis takes a dog's eye view of the apocalypse. The main catastrophe is apparently covered in another of his series, Crossed, which I have yet to read but it doesn't hurt Red Rover Charlie. In fact the abstract and incomplete perspective on man's seemingly total downfall as everyone is turned into psychotic zombies actually works in its' favour, adding an unpredictability and elliptical quality that adds to the confusion - there are various occasions when events are simply beyond the dogs' comprehension and that's where they're left.

That is one of the book's great strengths; there's a determined attempt to think everything through from the point of view of the three dogs we follow - Red, Rover and Charlie. They all have scant knowledge of anything they haven't seen in person, relying only on the fragmented word of mouth picked up from other dogs they've met in their largely urban lives. This extends to vocabulary, with the dogs speaking only the words they'd have picked up from day to day and frequently suffering headaches as they try to comprehend their lives being turned upside down.

Characterisation is the other big strength; the lead trio are quickly fleshed out and make for an engaging if imperfect trio, leading to a fantastic character arc for former helper dog Charlie as he gradually realises humans aren't perfect and shouldn't be the end goal for their quest. The dogs they meet on their travels are well-mapped as well and there are a few glimpses of other species too, notably some absolute bastard of a cat.

It all sounds a little silly written down but this isn't a kids' story; Ennis puts a considerable amount of gore in naturally and in his typically unflinching fashion canines aren't spared just because they're the good species in the book. But overall it's a mature and fascinating read, maybe perhaps undone by an ending which runs against the grain of the flashback narration from Charlie.

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Comic Review - Transformers: All Hail Megatron Coda

Having already blundered with the format and possibly the content of All Hail Megatron in the first place IDW decided the best way to deal with the troubled Maxi-series was to extend it by four issues and throw out a series of semi-related short stories while re gearing for the upcoming ongoing series. Mostly this involved catering to whiny Simon Furman fans who were used to having every single dot painstakingly joined for them and undoing as much of Shane McCarthy's work as possible. In short the treatment of McCarthy and AHM underlines that the company would have been fine with whatever if they'd had a blockbuster on their hands but now that the disappointing figures were in they were suddenly all about respecting loyal readers. 

The problem is that most of these stories really didn't need to be told. The Denton Tipton story showing Perceptor's transformation is nicely done and probably one of the more worthy subjects but at the same time is indicative of IDW's habit of capitulating to the pedestrian intelligence of their readers. Within the context of AHM it's entirely plausible and obvious that Perceptor needed to tool up to survive in the current situation and did so, something Sean McCarthy showed amply in two frames. Here we have ten pages for the angry idiots who need everything drip fed. It looks nice and it reads nice but it's like a rogue Mosaic. 

Same with Nick Roche's return to Kup; despite continuing the excellent work on Prowl and formally introducing future cult leader and shipping devotee James Roberts it's just spinning out a story from the evident fact that Kup got better.

It's basically a grab bag of unnecessary epilogues and worrying previews. There's an unnerving start for incoming writer Mike Costa as he resets Megatron and Starscream  to exactly where they've always been and undoes one of the few positive progressive elements of AHM; the first try out for Don Figueroa's appalling live-action influenced art style, a pointless return for Simon Furman...

Basically this is four issues of marking time in the most banal fashion imaginable. And part of  that is an indictment of IDW's ever-slapdash handling of the franchise on an editorial level. But it's also a tacit condemnation of a readership and fandom incapable of filling in the blanks and pathologically afraid of change.

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Comic Review - Wanted

After From Hell,  V for Vendetta and, well, any other Alan Moore adaptation, you get used to non-big two comic book movies sharing a title and not much else with the source material to the extent that some outright contradict the basic ethos (I'm looking at you, Comedian murder scene). I've not seen the Angelina Jolie vehicle Mark Millar's Top Cow mini Wanted inspired but in this case I'd be surprised if such fast and loose translation actually made it any worse.

The basic concept is fine and would layer be revisited in a more satisfactory fashion a few years later by Millar himself for the Wolverine storyline "Old Man Logan". The villains have put aside their differences, ganged up on the heroes and won. They now control the world through a semi secret alliance. So far so intriguing.

The problem is our protagonist, a put-upon lose who is unknowingly the son of a villain seemingly killed off in the opening pages. He's recruited and trained so he can take his place in the order and this means... lots of talking about how much crazy fun killing and raping with impunity is. It's basically how cool life is written by a 14-year old boy who spends too much time reading 4chan and masturbating to Max Hardcore pornography. Having a lecture on not being one of the sheeple on the nine to five by a middle-aged Scotsman who wrote for Sonic the Hedgehog is an amusing experience. 

That aside the plot is a mess; there's a coup within the society of villains that's nonsensically easy, and then our hero Wesley and his mentor Fox stage a counter-coup that's just as perfunctory. And then there's just about enough time for a return from the dead and one last sneer. All dressed in aggressive postmodernism blended with brattish coarseness.

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Comic Review - Airboy

How to adapt a dated public domain character from a largely obsolete genre? Well, if you're James Robinson and Greg Hinkle you make a comic about how difficult it is to adapt Airboy. Airboy - as the gloriously catty dialogue covers - was a Golden Age pilot title produced by Hillman. Thirty years after they folded and the copyright lapsed serial cheapskates Eclipse picked him up and gave him to Chuck Dixon for a series that developed a solid following before the usual Eclipse nonsense of over saturation killed it.

The Image revival takes the odd for of co-starring semi-fictionalised versions of Robinson and Hinkle looking for inspiration through a drug fuelled bender. Robinson basically has a midlife crisis on the page, some stark self evaluation being laid out with Hinkle as a vaguely disapproving foil. Both get caught up in an orgy of debauchery before a shared drug hallucination sees Airboy pulled into their world,  much to his disgust.

The result is an unusual postmodern comic that's as much about its burnt out writer as about it's nominal star but strangely not in an obnoxious look-at-me way. It's not for all tastes and at times you do feel like you'd rather be reading something more straightforward but it is undeniably a  true original. 

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