Broken Frontier

A group of friends have created a preview comic book filled with possibilities, but while their hearts might be in the right place, their sampler needs more work.

The book opens with "Generic Super-Hero Man," a faithful reproduction of the old Hostess ads that once were as much a part of comic books as x-ray glasses and sea monkeys. The artwork by Kelly Tindall has a crisp cartoon feel that looks great. A second advertisement illustrated by Jason Dinger also is well-done, although the work’s a little less polished and the computer lettering takes some of the charm away. But why create an homage to an old fruit pie commercial? Beyond replacing Spider-Man or Batman with a generic superhero, there’s no attempt to satirize or poke fun at the ads, so both "stories" seem rather pointless.

The first major adventure in the sampler – "The Sub-Cultural Syndicate" – is a meandering introduction to two comic book fans. After walking home, the two friends wake up their monkey, learn that ninjas are swarming downtown, and gear up for battle. Then the five-page story ends.

It’s one of those things that would probably be funnier if you were stoned, but otherwise just goes nowhere. Mike Storniolo’s opening dialogue, debating the value of independent and superhero comics, is crammed awkwardly into three panels that barely take up half the page. His mid-story ad for Kewl Water seems appropriated from Dark Knight Returns or Transmetropolitan. And his use of kung-fu monkeys and rampaging ninjas feels clichéd and unoriginal.

The artwork doesn’t help either. The anatomy of the characters is often painful to look at – especially the Jim Mahfood fan, who looks like one of those bendable action figures – and whoever is drawing the monkey needs more practice.

Fortunately, the second major story is much better.

It still has its flaws. The flow of the story is jerky and confusing sometimes, and while it’s great that they’re fans of CKY, t-shirts, CDs and unnecessary dialogue revolving around the rock band change what should be an admiring mention into major overkill.

Still, I can’t help but like the Budz. There’s something sadly funny about their hatred for their teacher (they can’t understand why he torments them "for no reason," even though they smoke pot before class, don’t even pretend to study, and call him a dickhead in class), and I laughed out loud when Mr. Dawson gave Tim the score on his latest test.

I laughed again when – for no reason at all – a guy with a "flipped-up collar and rolled-up sleeves" pops up in the last panel saying, "I’m an asshole." Considering the fact that I saw that same guy two days ago when I was eating at Ham’s and had the exact same thought ("That guy looks like an asshole"), it’s not surprising that I want to read more about the Kind Budz.

Although the same two guys do the artwork on this story also, the illustrations are much cleaner. The black holes for eyes were a little disconcerting, but otherwise I liked it a lot.

There’s an advertisement for "Killer Lawn Gnomes from Hell" at the back of the book, and while there’s nothing but a title and a picture to suggest what the story might be, I would be very interested to see what these guys do with the idea.

While I didn’t like everything about the book (the Sub-Cultural Syndicate should be dropped as an unsuccessful experiment and the Generic Super-Hero ads could benefit with some humor), it succeeded in the end. I hope these guys go ahead and put together a debut issue of Toxic Shock. There’s room for improvement, but this is a nice start.