Weird Worlds #3 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Lobo and the psychic electric eels!  Garbage Man vs. the Wolf Man!  Tanga, savior of the doughboy race!

The Review: Sci-fi comes in two schools: your classic horror and space adventure stuff, and your mind-blowing, semi-existential, social commentary concepts.  Thanks to writers like Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Jonathan Hickman, the material you see in comics nowadays lean more toward science metafiction—which is all well and good.  But it’s nice and kind of a relief to sit with something like Weird Worlds, which promises old-school, sci-fi fun.

Kevin VanHook’s Lobo comes across several twists this issue, most of them for the better. It turns out the Xanaxx chancellor turning out is not pure consciousness suspended in luminescent blue goo with electric eels swimming in it—disappointing, as it’s the first cool idea this story has come up with so far.  But VanHook makes a clever point about how these broad “scientific” concepts are quite nearly as farfetched as old-fashioned superstition.  He also puts the turnaround to good use by setting Lobo on a new, more heroic direction.  The dialogue is still pretty weak, leaning on the hopelessly silly, as the aliens seem a bit too Americanized in their references and language (“chicken fat,” “geek-fest,” and the worst: “Oh, cwap”).  Jerry Oroway’s art is as decent as ever, but it’s not a redeeming factor if you’re still not sold on VanHook’s story.

Lopresti has kept a pretty tight rein on Garbage Man’s narration, but he loses his edge a bit this issue—the hulking monstrosity gets downright chatty at times (not helped by the use of speech bubbles as opposed to captions, painting him as a mumbling crazy person on top of a disfigured mutant).  Still, G-Man’s human past is slowly coming to light, heading for a direct collision with the perpetrators of his hideous fate.  There are a lot of threads in play here, what with Batman in the picture, the search for Garbage Man’s former assistant/friend(/love interest?), and now a run-in with an oversized werewolf.  If Lopresti manages to tie everything up in three issues, power to him.  In the meantime, you’ll be treated to some beautiful, richly colored (Dave McCaig’s work) pages of any title on the stands, proof that great art can sell even scripts that aren’t all there yet.

Tanga’s bubbliness seemed a little much at first, but since Kevin Maguire’s given her a sarcastic streak and now an edgy, drunken persona, she has really grown on me.  Even though the plot doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere, the ride is so enjoyable, it hardly matters.  Come on—you’ve got a rampaging lizard beast chomping on Sasquatch mercenaries and alien messiahs; it doesn’t get better than that.  Plus, the whole thing gets peppered with some strong comedy, mostly in Tanga and Bent’s nonplussed commentary on the chaos around them.  Bent is the perfect straight man to Tanga’s hijinks (“You are gloriously insane.  Don’t do this!”).  And no one can draw his own script better than Maguire can; without his incredible alien designs and sense of paneling, the action wouldn’t be nearly enough to make up for the meandering storyline.

Conclusion: As we hit the second act, these storylines take some steps back to gain some steam for their push towards the end.  Even though much depends on how the creative teams play things out, I’m already starting to feel like it’ll be very hard to let go when this series concludes.

Grade: B+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Someday, I hope, sci-fi writers will find a cooler name for their intergalactic currency than “credits.”

– How does Maguire give a wry expression to Bent’s two vestigial eye appendages?  Because he’s awesome, that’s how.

– Remember that guy Tanga kissed last issue?  We get to see his mouth tube.  And let me put it his way: Tanga made a good call not following through with that one.