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‘Cherubs!:’ Advance Hardcover Review

 

CherubsAfter being framed for the first murder to be committed in Heaven, five cherubim flee to Earth in order to find the true culprit while avoiding the agents of Heaven and Hell hot on their trail.

The art in this book is grotesque, but it works wonderfully with the story’s tone. Characters’ deformed appearances are the norm, and it works with the absurdity of everything else, but it is a strange art style that takes some getting used to and is never what I’d call “cute” or “pretty.” I wasn’t the biggest fan of the art’s entirely black and white style. There’s so much happening on some of these pages, especially later on in the book, with sometimes dozens of characters appearing in a single panel, that some color would help differentiate the characters and add a bit more life to the story. The book does do something clever with its color choices, depicting Heaven and Hell as white and black while Earth gets a treatment of gray shades thrown in.

The cherubim are obsessed with the physicality they have to contend with while living on Earth including eating, sexual attraction, and all the various fluids and excretions that start to come out of the little, winged perverts. Make no mistake, Cherubs! is a book filled with d— and fart jokes and is tailored to the crowd that enjoys base, physical humor. This sort of humor is hit or miss with me, so it should come as no surprise that I grew bored with it as the book progressed. This fact was made worse in that Cherubs! repeats jokes frequently. Even the jokes I found funny I deeply hated by the end of the story.

Cherubs! is also filled with referential humor, tossing in thinly veiled versions of characters from all over pop-culture. The first few times this happens, it’s pretty funny, but as the story continues more than half the pages seem to be devoted to these jokes. Rather than keeping the references subtle, the writing starts to point out who these characters are supposed to be and keep gesturing back as if to say, “Look how clever we are.” I’d say Cherubs! spends too much time with these jokes and goes out of its way to try and cram in as many references as possible, which again kills the joke in the first place.

Now, what I did get a kick out of where the more subtle jokes and twists on familiar concepts like how Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, and the supernatural community operate. Little things like having a group of witches riding their broomsticks dressed like an old lady motorcycle gang or the ways the circles of Hell are depicted, made me laugh. Christianity is made fun of quite a bit as well, so readers who have trouble poking fun at scripture might want to steer clear of this one. Cherubs! finds a way to make fun of everything eventually, putting a silly spin on even the darkest concepts and ideas.

Cherubs! is one of those rare titles I think would work better reading issue to issue than all at once in a trade. While Cherubs! maintains its tone and style of humor throughout the book, too much of anything at once can be a bad thing, and this title managed to make me dislike it by the time I was finished.

 

 

Kristine Chester, Fanbase Press Senior Contributor

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Favorite Comic Book SeriesAtomic Robo Favorite D&D Class:  Wizard Favorite Ice Cream Flavor:  Cookies N' Cream

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