Broken Frontier

If you've never heard of the Superf*ckers before then you have no idea what you've been missing!

Taking cues from classic teen superbooks like Legion of Superheroes and Teen Titans, James Kochalka created a group of superpowered kids living in a clubhouse. Taking other influences from classic reality television like The Real World, the Superf*ckers are a bunch of narcissistic potty-mouths who behave so atrociously you'd think twice before inviting them over for dinner.

With issue 279 (in other words, the fourth issue) Kochalka may have met one of his biggest challenges of the series: to take characters who might otherwise be one-joke wonders and making them into a group that readers would want to visit again and again.

The balance between pee jokes and relationship humor is a hard one to tread. At times the gross-out humor gets a little stale. How many times can you hear the same jokes over and over? In moving the plot along, Superf*ckers hopefully promises to explore a little new territory.

It seems that Kochalka came back to these characters in a hurry, not wasting time reminding readers of half of the characters' names. The differences between the characters are clear enough, but just a little naming (or even a roll call) could save readers from wondering what the brown-haired emo guy's name was. This might be the first time in the series that we see jokes and plot points that require some understanding of what has come before. A little more exposition could have gone a long way. On the other hand, dropping readers into the thick of the divergent "plot" lines has the kind of urgency one might expect from the guy who created Monkeys vs. Robots!

Kochalka's cartooning remains simplistic and vibrant at the same time. If you're unfamiliar with his work, it's boldly basic. Kochalka's style is a hundred and eighty degree turn from the overdrawn comics of the mainstream. Superf*ckers lives in the nether realm between alt-comics and funny pages cartooning, a world where everything is bright and pretty, even if it is momentarily disgusting.

All in all, this latest issue of Superf*ckers is a mixed bag. Some of the jokes don't hit unless you remember the set-ups. However if you can get past the fourth-grade funnies, it's still quite a rewarding book. Completely unlike both the four-color world of the Silver Age comics or the streetwise mentality of the Modern Age, Superf*ckers crackles with Kochalka's personal creative stamp: comics that are as pure as they come!