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Advance Review: Skullkickers #3

By | November 24th, 2010
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Written by Jim Zubkavich
Illustrated by Edwin Huang
& Misty Coats

“ONE THOUSAND OPAS AND A DEAD BODY,” Part Three
A pilfered poison pabulum has pickled pieces of our protagonist’s paunch while portentous poetic prophecies proudly parade apace, parlaying a perilous paradigm. Paraphrasing: SKULLKICKERS is a particularly perfect packaged pamphlet of plucky pulp worth every precious penny in perpetuity. Purchase!

Man this book is fun! Not all comics need to be loaded down with gritty, eye popping violence or vague, semi-meaningful symbolism or blah blah *insert things hipsters like about comics.” Sometimes a book can just be light hearted, silly and have “making the reader smile” as a goal in and of itself. Skullkickers is one of those books, and despite picking it up mostly on a whim based entirely on the idea that “if Image is investing in a new property, it must be good”, I’ve really been enjoying myself. Clickity click to find out what I thought of the newest issue!

While the first two issues seemed a little more drawn out, this one was a little speedier and felt like a quicker read. Starting off where last issue left us with our as yet unnamed heroes riding off with the mercenary band’s poisoned stew, we’re treated to an amusing two in one scene cutting back and forth between the Skullkickers and the mercenary and his wife. As it turns out, the poison in the stew was concocted with improper (read: on sale) ingredients, making it distinctly less, well, poisonous. However, it was not entirely free of side-effects as it caused our Dwarven hero, who gulps down the entire brew, to (pardon my French) trip balls the entire night while taking off his pants and beating himself silly.

The next morning, our heroes continue on their quest to rescue the prime minister’s corpse from the evil Necromancer intent on zombifying it. This leads to one of the most amusing fight scenes seen since the hay day of The Incredible Hercules (yes, I know, all of three years ago…that still counts as hay day.) However, it is unquestionably not the (admittedly less than extreme) violence itself that is amusing, but the use of captions, sound effects and intentionally included stage direction that really creates the tongue-in-cheek atmosphere that these characters exist in and which makes the book so amusing. Following this brief scuffle, the issue ends with our short buddy being taken captive with tall, white and bald nowhere to be found.

If that story description sounded silly to you, that’s because the story itself was even sillier. Zubkavich mixes high fantasy with dark comedy and a healthy dose of buddy comedy-esque antics so well that he actually makes me forget how much I hate Dungeons and Dragons and all those that enjoy it. Like I said above, this book appeals to my still very active childlike humor sensibilities and provides a run romp that actually ends up making you want more once it’s over. Creating character investment through sheer comedy and creative banter has always been an effective method of serial storytelling (as evidenced by the 800 horrible Deadpool books on the shelves), and it’s nice to see that method put to good use.

On the art end, I really really like Huang’s east meets west style very akin to Joe Madeuria or even Humberto Ramos or Skottie Young. His line work is solid and his character compositions, while far from traditional, are definitely unique and functional. However, I find its his unwavering attention to detail that really defines his work on this book, right down to our dwarven hero’s beard. On top of this, the coloring really manages to give this book a unique look and feel that sets it apart from other fantasy oriented books out there.

I’ve said it a lot during this review, but it really needs to be said again: this book is crazy fun. If you’re looking for something “deep” then it might not be for you, but if you’re looking for a good fantasy thriller complete with foul mouthed dwarves, guns, zombies, fat were-wolves and bad stew trips, then you probably wanna pick this one up.

Final Verdict: 8.7 – Buy


Joshua Mocle

Joshua Mocle is an educator, writer, audio spelunker and general enthusiast of things loud and fast. He is also a devout Canadian. He can often be found thinking about comics too much, pretending to know things about baseball and trying to convince the masses that pop-punk is still a legitimate genre. Stalk him out on twitter and thought grenade.

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