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“Mechaboys”

By | March 4th, 2019
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James Kochalka stretches the truth like a rubber band in his graphic novel, “Mechaboys.” On one hand, it’s an autobiographical story, centered around two friends in the waning days of high school. But then, it has 17-year-olds running around in robot suits. That mix of humor, energy, and attitude make this book such an interesting, funny, even tender experience. Warning: spoilers.

Written, Illustrated, and Lettered by James Kochalka

Two lovable dirtbag teens, tired of being bullied, build a robot battle suit to take revenge on their entire high school. But they never expected to become… kind of popular? Experience the thrill of keg parties, gym classes, bear attacks, first kisses, cafeteria trays, and car crashes… but with mechanical enhancement! It’s an action-packed dark-comedy teen-romance for the ages, from Eisner Award-winning cartoonist James Kochalka (American Elf, Superf*ckers).
•Kochalka’s first book for older readers in some time-like a love-child of Superbad, Carrie, Mean Girls, and Transformers!
• Genuine high-school sweetness mixed in with robot action and insanity!

Although it’s nearly 200 pages long, “Mechaboys” is a quick read, a flash of a narrative. Pages are generally structured in three panels, filled with heavy blacks, minimal characters, snappy dialogue, and big, bulky images. The story flies by in a blink. While a lot happens, it all feels so surreal and impossible. Appropriate because, like those last days of high school, everything seems so important yet so fleeting. And for the bear fights and garage robots, for the big emotions and explosive hormones, it’s that truth of transition that gives this book its heart.

James Kochalka centers the story around James and Zachery. They’ve built a mecha suit from James’s dead dad’s lawn mower in order to combat bullies around their school. It’s clunky, obtrusive, and its leg tends to malfunction. Also, it’s mostly for Zachery, who insists people call him Zeus. He’s the ringleader of their operation, a pseudo baby anarchist punk ready to watch the world blow up. James, whom everyone calls Jaime even though he doesn’t want to be known as that anymore, is mostly along for the ride. For most of the book, he’s ready to carve out his own identity, set his own agency, but he always tends to get sucked in with other people’s demands. He loves his comics but burns them in a trashcan when Zachery eggs him on. He recites the same hollow spiel Zachary gave him.

“Mechaboys” is about the dissolution of their friendship. However, it’s not presented in a tragic or lamentable. James and Zachery’s split comes more because they want something different out of their lives. James, suddenly finding himself accepted and welcomed, starts to pursue his own wants and desires. Zachery, that pill in the room who takes the joy out of everything and wants to make everyone hurt like him, therefore takes every misstep, every awkward opportunity to drag him down. James might feel guilty about how he blows off Zachery but he’s not ready to give up his newfound attention.

James Kochalka favors bold lines and abstract expressions. His characters are malleable and elastic. Objects and props don’t seem grounded and they float in the backgrounds. It’s like free verse perspective. He’s aware of how much energy and power can come from a curve, how much excitement he can pull out of one stroke. For as wild and jittery as the art looks, as unrefined and abstract as it can get, for as much as Kochalka pushes “Mechaboys” into an early 2000s Cartoon Network aesthetic, the comic never loses its heart.

Because of this, “Mechaboys” can be hysterical. Take a mid-scene where Zachery’s about to crash a party in his mechasuit. He hears a roar and turns around to see a wild animal looming up at him. “Oh poopsie. A bear,” he mutters. It can be horrifying, like when Zachery pressures James to help him destroy the school. “It’ll be like Columbine and Robocop at once.” It can be sweet, like a scene where James doesn’t understand why all these girls surround him but he likes that they surround him. The less representational, the more willing it is to ignore real-world physics, the more often a comic can exhibit a wide range of emotions.

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James Kochalka has a clear endearment toward these characters. The meathead jock boys are presented in the way you’d expect a meathead jock boy to be presented. However, James Kochalka also makes sure to give them both a humanizing moment, a moment where we all realize once they’re testosterone wears off, they might actually come close to decent people. Or they’ll just be jokers for the rest of their lives. Either or.

Not everything plays out as well, however. There’s a subplot with a creepy teacher that doesn’t feel far enough in the background to be a rumor and not present enough to be a legitimate threat. Some character work is given in a throwaway line from another character, those personality traits that could help us understand where one of these boys comes from.

Nevertheless, “Mechaboys” still has a lot to like. It offers an honest snippet of a life, mixed in with a ridiculous gadget. Even with the mechasuit, even with a denouement that’s so impossible it’s the only way this book could have ended, even with the attacking bear, it feels like it’s reaching for a Truth. It ends in a frenzy, which is also the feeling it leaves behind.


Matthew Garcia

Matt hails from Colorado. He can be found on Twitter as @MattSG.

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