Ruh-roh.

A good plan, though it may not survive contact with the enemy, has wiggle room within it.  You have options chosen for various scenarios that you anticipate, and if you’re good enough failsafes for when you find something completely new to you.  Tychon’s plan was pretty straightfoward: Get the big, honking doom sword; stab and slice everyone you need to in order to free your dad.  A minor complication that crops up is another executioner showing up to do his job.  Of course, the way that the honor is chosen would be a fight, between our ersatz Headtaker and his Wailing Blade against the Bone Breaker with her Wrackhammer.  I just want to say right now that these names that Rich Douek and company have blessed us with are nothing short of spectacular, and though I’m going to expand on it more in the next section, the world and weapons seem primo and perfect.  There are so many subtle clues that I feel are going to make an issue soon quite hilarious.  Everyone who has sense (King Auros, Clytus) is either unable to talk or playing their own game, so, from the jump, I feel that the fools (still using that word) are gonna be slobberknockered when the twist drops.  Buried within this ’80s Wrestlemania are secrets within mysteries that I cannot wait to get to, and the text keeps teasing in that vein.

I love how Mulvey introduces us to Bone Breaker and Wrackhammer, full gore, slight double entendre, and a vicious blow that even the reader feels a bit.  What I love more than anything visually in this issue is the fun ways that Joe plays with composition and structure.  The low angles and wide shots bring foreboding and a gentle tension to the fore.  There’s still plenty of brooding animosity to go around, but the subtle flavors being laid in make the issue really sing.

This book is good fun, and though I truly don’t have a character that I’m rooting for, I think it’ll be fun watching everyone come across the machinations of the more thoughtful characters.  Clytus has a delightfully cheery disposition before the big fight that makes me think that the next issue may be the one where we get to complete the picture a little better.  There are a lot of series out there that are thinly veiled allusions to our own world, making an impact on us and helping to define certain points of order, and though it might turn out to have a bit of a deeper meaning, this series is ultimately good, ribald fun.  

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Creative Team: Rich Douek (Writer), Joe Mulvey (Artist), Chris Sotomayor, Jules Rivera (Colorists), Taylor Esposito (letterer)
Publisher: Comix Tribe
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