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“King” #1 Makes L.A. Even Weirder [Review]

By | August 26th, 2015
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The team behind the aborted “Green Lantern Corps” post-Geoff Johns run, Josh Fialkov, Bernard Chang, and Marcelo Maiolo, reunite for a Kirby-influenced, post-apocalyptic miniseries, published by Amazon’s comic publishing arm, Jet City. The book mixes Los Angeles culture, mutation, myth, and the best Garfield joke ever put to paper.

Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov
Illustrated by Bernard Chang

From critically acclaimed comic book writer Joshua Hale Fialkov (The Bunker, Echoes, and I, Vampire) and superstar artists Bernard Chang and Marcelo Maiolo (Green Lantern Corps, Batman Beyond) comes a postapocalyptic action/adventure comedy.

King just wants what anybody wants: not to get fired, eaten, or forced to mate with a cheetah lady. For Earth’s sole human survivor after the apocalypse, life among Los Angeles’s strange new populace ain’t easy. Working for the LA Department of Reclamation, King gets a lot of crappy jobs going on quests and searching for artifacts from the “old world,” which can range from the mythical (Excalibur!) to the absurd (an iPod shuffle—which, let’s be honest, was a terrible, terrible invention). The commute can be a real pain in the asphalt, too; the 405 freeway is filled with mutants, monsters, mayhem, and tentacled Elder Gods. And that’s all before you hit the horrors of the San Fernando Valley. As the world’s freakish inhabitants battle for supremacy, King searches for the “seed of life,” which may give Earth the second chance it probably doesn’t even deserve.

Issue 1: August 19, 2015. King is the sole human survivor of the apocalypse. While working for the LA Department of Reclamation, he scours the wasteland in search of the “life seed”—but discovers his deadliest foe instead.

There is a weird thing that happens when people of slightly different generations are on either end of a creative work. When I was a teenager, just starting to get into punk rock, I thought that some of the local Jersey punk bands were the best thing to ever use a distortion pedal, but to my slightly older friends, they were poseurs of the highest order, taking Milo Goes to College, pulling out all of the humor and insight and replacing it with lame ‘boy meets girl’ stories that never brought anything new to the equation.

And so, when Josh Fialkov calls this a love letter to Jack Kirby, as a guy slightly younger than Josh, I don’t really see it – instead, I see it through the lens of the late 80s/early 90s obsession with creating hybrid creations – think Bebop and Rocksteady of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” or Battletoads, or Street Sharks. That isn’t to say that the book is devoid from Kirby influence – far from it – it is just not the first place my mind went.

But let’s delve into the Kirby influence – this book deals with a character named King (#1), who is referred to as the ‘last human on Earth” (#2), and who talks about the arrivals and deaths of various gods on Earth (#3). The story also is very much a Los Angeles-centric one. There are a ton of movie cliches tossed in, which add to the Hollywood feel considerably (one last job before retiring, the charismatic wunderkind who is always late for work, the gruff captain/boss), and also make up an important part of the mythology.

For you see, the book takes place in a time when (almost) all of humanity has been wiped out, but they are still living in the ruins of human culture, and many of the creatures appear to be mutated humans. Because of that, they are, in many ways, still playing human. They still wear pants, they still show up to work, they still drive, and they still make pop culture references, even if they probably have no idea what they mean.

The references were one part of the book that I had a very hard time with, if only because they seemed to either be turns of phrase too specific/accurate than to have been passed down generation after generation. or so anachronistic that no one would know them. King makes a reference to one of the stars of I Dream of Jeannie, which would have aired, in storytelling terms, at least 350 ‘rainy seasons’ ago, literally hundreds of years before anyone in this book would have been born. Sure, we still say things like ‘my two cents’ decades after two cents meant anything to anyone, but we still use pennies.

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The detail that really, truly, makes the book work, however, is how Bernard Chang just totally goes for it, without reservation. While the story is clearly Kirby influenced, Chang doesn’t try to give us a lesser version of Kirby’s style, but instead makes the book undoubtedly his own. Chang is coming off of a long run on “Green Lantern Corps,” where he got to draw all sorts of bizarre aliens, and he shifts into drawing mutant hybrids with remarkable ease. No creature looks totally natural, but they all work in this world. The book just wouldn’t work if the world didn’t feel cohesive, and Chang’s art eliminates that concern almost instantly.

Part of that credit also goes to colorist Marcelo Maiolo, who is the finest colorist that, for some reason, no one is talking about. He shifts from over the top rainbow tunes to subtle browns and grays with ease, and makes each panel truly come alive. Because of the absurdity of Chang’s features, Maiolo has to do some of the heavy lifting to convey emotion and import, and so there are certain panels he completely shifts the palette to bring home a point. He and Fialkov have done a ton of work together, and you can see why – he provides nice punctuation, regardless of who his penciller is. When it is someone of Chang’s talent, it just makes the book all that much more exciting.

Chang and Maiolo, in many ways, give the reader an easier path to understanding this book than Fialkov does. The script is dense, and Fialkov doesn’t really give too many shortcuts in; in fact, if it wasn’t for the humor and the film tropes, the book would read relatively inscrutable. While I can’t really say that is a good thing, it is refreshing to see a book that wants to be what it is, and doesn’t really care if the reader isn’t spoonfed details. Perhaps some of that has to do with this being a Jet City comic, where there appears to be less editorial oversight than other publishers, or perhaps it is just that Fialkov has a story to tell, only had so much time he could get committed from Chang and Maiolo, and decided to pack the story with as much as he could.

Regardless, once you find your way into the story, it is a fun, odd, and funny book. I would like to see more about King and his family/past, but I can’t imagine the book won’t go there soon. Until it does, I just hope to get a lasagna joke next month.

Final Verdict: 7.1 – A strong debut that could use a little more of a narrative pathway in.


Brian Salvatore

Brian Salvatore is an editor, podcaster, reviewer, writer at large, and general task master at Multiversity. When not writing, he can be found playing music, hanging out with his kids, or playing music with his kids. He also has a dog named Lola, a rowboat, and once met Jimmy Carter. Feel free to email him about good beer, the New York Mets, or the best way to make Chicken Parmagiana (add a thin slice of prosciutto under the cheese).

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