On this week’s Off the Cape, I cheat. This comic features capes, but I can promise you, Ryan Browne’s webcomic God Hates Astronauts stars superheroes quite unlike any you’ve ever seen. I was going to describe it, but that truly won’t do it justice. I’ll let Browne’s Twitter page do that for me.
The worlds finest free web-comic about bears, big gross heads, infidelity, old tyme boxers who get resurrected by magic bears, criminal owls & lasers.
Yeah. That sounds about right. This week’s Off the Cape looks at maybe the finest in the world of absurdist humor from the world of comics, both digital and print. A comic Darick Robertson said is “The funniest and most original comic (he’s) read in years. A hilarious writer and excellent artist, Ryan Browne is the next Mike Allred.” That’s heavy praise. See what I think after the jump.
I have to say, until talking with the artist of this week’s new Image Comics series The Red Wing, Nick Pitarra, I had never heard of this webcomic. He highly suggested checking it out, claiming that it was “the most insane thing you’ll ever read.”
Whenever someone says something like that, it is impossible for a person to resist looking at it. If he said “it was really good” I’d probably say “oh sure, I’ll check it out” and then forget about it. But the most insane thing I’ll ever read? That is something that must be read.
And then I read it.
It was the most insane thing I’ve ever read. But in the best way that can be said.
While it still has not gotten that far into the story, in the first two “issues” and three pages of God Hates Astronauts there have been more “holy shit” moments than both event comics currently going on at the Big Two. Granted, they are holy shit moments in that, for example, you see a man decapitate himself and then attach a ghost cow’s head to his own torso, which are quite unlike the ones you see in Flashpoint (I guess Barry Allen did fry himself with lightning twice in about 4 pages of comic, so maybe not), but holy shit moments they most definitely are!
This is basically the greatest thing in pure absurdity that you can find in comics. I think the thing I like so much about it is the delivery and tone of the humor. There are some moments that are just completely obvious if you think about it (like the line after “Don’t worry. Dr. Professor can fix it. He can fix anything.”), but the way Browne makes it happen is so hilarious that it doesn’t matter. The execution is so spot on that you could read the script before hand and still think “what the hell was that?!” and laugh hysterically as you see it executed. This guy has a gift my friends.
Speaking of Dr. Professor, there are some genius character names and creations in here. In particular, I love the nonchalance the characters in this world speak to each other. I mean, in any other world a buffalo wearing an old timey wig while dressed in judge’s robes talking to a mummy bailiff would be…well, atypical and frankly shocking. But in this world? The aforementioned man of the law simply addresses his compadre as “Mummy Bailiff” to which the Mummy responds with “Buffalo Judge” as if these are the most normal things to be doing in the world. Because they are in this one.
Simple. Inelegant. Completely hilarious.
Speaking of the creations Browne reveals, I want to nominate the Anti-Mugger as character of the year in comics. His character begrudgingly works for NASA simply because…well, I don’t know why he does. His entire agenda is based around stopping muggers, and that is about it. But the best thing about it is the same reason why Tommy Corn was the best character in I <3 Huckabee’s – just like Tommy’s obsession with America’s oil dependence, the Anti-Mugger is completely devoted to stopping mugging for no apparent reason. And it kills me every time he references it, and by god he references it a lot.
Continued belowOne thing you’ll notice about my look at God Hates Astronauts is that I have not mentioned any plot whatsoever. Well, that’s true. I haven’t. But this comic isn’t about plot. Really, it’s about moving the chess pieces on the board from one absurd and hilariously warped soap opera situation to the next (the most recent page shared casually revealed one of the main characters was pregnant! Gasp!) in the hopes of striking comedy gold in a new, even more weird place than before.
You know from the get go that this is not going to be your run-of-the-mill comic. I mean, one of the first pages we get is Browne’s suggested voice talent for the cast. On that page, he casts a character named Bear High Wizard with “The Bear Who Played Chewbacca.”
In a way, I feel like I don’t need to say anything else about this comic.
Its brilliance lies in its insanity, and by god, does it have ample amounts of both. Get on this comic people. Buy it for free, because it is damn good comics.
