Warriors, come out to plaaaaayyy! Waaarrioooors, come out to plaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!
Written by by Ryan Ferrier
Illustrated by Devaki Neogi
Lines have been crossed and The Wrath has kidnapped one of The Fever. Now that Betty has given King Charles the perfect excuse to start a turf war, any old rules and truces have been called off. Machette Betty will have to make a decision—the safety of her town or the life of one of her own?
One of the things I’ve noticed recently, as both a reader and reviewer of comics, is that there have been a good number of comics that seems very readily inspired by films more than other comics. Even looking at my past couple of reviews, something like “Southern Cross” shared a lot of its DNA with Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey and took the storytelling to new levels because of that. Now, I don’t think comparisons are inherently bad, as comparisons often allow us to more easily experience something (“Oh, what I’m watching, Y, is a lot like this thing I like, X. I liked X a lot so I’ll probably like Y, right?”) and I say all this mostly just to justify the crappy The Warriors reference I opened this review with.
By this point, as a reader of Multiversity, you should probably be aware of Ryan Ferrier. Writer of such things as “D4VE and now “Curb Stomp”, he’s a writer with a lot of wit and humanity and untapped potential. Going into “Curb Stomp”, all those things remain true, except that we get to see a little more of that potential shine here. Ferrier is joined by Devaki Neogi here to tell the story of a girl gang banding together to save their town from the machinations of the heads of the other gangs in surrounding towns. We pick up the second issue as a member of the Fever, the aforementioned girl gang of Old Beach, has been kidnapped by a rival gang, a war is brewing.
The key to “Curb Stomp” is family. Underneath the slick, neon 80s-displaced-in-the-mid-2010s vibe of the visual style and the shocking, visceral violence hidden behind Devaki Neogi’s otherwise unassuming art, lies a story about family. An unconventional family, sure, and one that operates as a girl gang to keep other gangs from peddling drugs in their beachside town, but family’s family all the same. And while the first issue of “Curb Stomp” introduced us to the members and dynamic of the Fever in peace time, what we see in this issue is a Fever beginning to be pulled apart by the stress of an impending gang war. This is where “Curb Stomp” really shines as Ferrier’s writing digs deep into who each member of the Fever and while they’re all the kind of girls to dig their heels in the dirt and utter a seething “fuck you” between their teeth to anyone who gets in their way, this issue shows how each of them begins to break under the pressure. Allegiances are tested and loyalty goes out the window as even the bravest of the Fever are tested to the breaking point.
Ferrier and Neogi make “Curb Stomp” such a compelling read by making sure you realise at all times that these women are real people. They’re not just one-note superhuman badasses who handle everything thrown at them with ease. Even though it may look like that, they have their own flaws and weaknesses and the events of the story are already taking their toll. And while Ferrier’s writing digs under the skin of the characters, Neogi’s art brings a down to Earth realism to the book.
At first glance, Neogi’s art was rather simple and unassuming, there was a lot more to it than initially meets the eye. Neogi uses a broad, thick-lined style of artwork that comes off a little static at first, but much like Ferrier’s writing, the focus is on the characters more than anything else. Close-ups of the characters reveal that Neogi knows how to bring these characters to life with a few distinct facial twitches and expressions. With a book that lives and dies based on its main cast of characters, an artist who didn’t care about differentiating the characters in the artwork would have killed the book outright and, thankfully, Devaki Neogi is not that artist. Neogi’s artwork works best, in fact, during the quieter moments of the issue – of which this issue has more than the first issue and the artwork is all the better for it, even if it is at the expense of the shock factor of the first issue.
Continued belowWhile Devaki Neogi renders the world with an unassuming sense of realism, the colours by Jeremy Lawson tell a whole different story. If you went into “Curp Stomp” expecting a naturalistic palette of colours, then you came to the wrong neighbourhood. This issue is awash with neon tinged hues of mostly purples and greens to bring a slight level of unreality to the comic. While the writing and art emphasise the story as a real world filled with real people and real problems, the colours separate that by reminded the reader that this is, after all, a comic book and that melding of reality and unreality not only works, but makes the story all the more interesting for it. While some of the colour combinations are intentionally sickly, there are still more than a few pages that hurt the eyes to look at, especially digitally, but the effect on the story cannot be denied. While a comparison to The Warriors is what started this review, I think a comparison to Hotline Miami is much more appropriate when talking about the colours.
“Curb Stomp” #2 is an interesting beast of a book. While the first issue hooked the reader with a shocking display of visceral violence sparking the events that ripple into this issue, the story here is much more interesting in looking at how those events are affecting the characters of the story mentally. Ferrier focuses on bringing a sense of believability to the characters by having them all be shaken in various ways by the events of the first issue and how this can take a complicated situation and make it even worse for everyone involved. Layer on top of that the rather unique art stylings of Devaki Neogi and Jeremy Lawson, who pair a sense of simplistic realism in the linework with over-the-top neon-tinged unreality in the colours and you have yourself a comic book that, really, there’s no reason not to pick up. While something like “Bitch Planet” may be getting a lot of the attention, there are still books like “Curb Stomp” doing great work out of the spotlight, you just have to do a little digging to find them.
Final Verdict: 7.9 – Ferrier continues to shine as a writer in a book that anyone who’s reading “Bitch Planet” should definitely be checking out.
