By: Joe Casey (writer), Mike Huddleston (art & colors), Rus Wooton (letters) & Sonia Harris (graphic design)
The Story: The Butcher’s anti-heroic crisis get’s taken up a notch.
What’s Good: Back in April, when I reviewed Issue #1 of this series, I expressed some concern that this series could grow stale once readers had seen the awesome tricks that Casey and Huddleston were dropping on us. Turns out I needn’t have worried because there is a story here and it really starts to come out in this issue. Deconstructions of superheroes aren’t anything new and Butcher Baker seems to be fairly similar to the Comedian from Watchmen, but the style and flair that Casey and Huddleston are bringing to this work are what keeps this title from seeming derivative and puts it over the top.
In this issue we start to explore what caused BB to head into retirement. What caused him to seek out this hedonistic lifestyle that we saw back in issue #1? And what kind of hero can he be today now that he’s become so cynical about everything?
But, don’t get the idea that this comic is mopey and introspective. Oh no…. It is still a BB comic, so we get some sex, some nudity and an absolute slobberknocker of a super-powered fight. Good stuff all around.
It’s hard to come up with new things to say about Mike Huddleston’s art every month. It’s really, really good and very unique. All of his characters are very cartoony and just exploding with energy. You can just look at any panel in the issue and know basically what is going on without looking at the words. Love the digital colors he is using and I even love the dot-overlay (which I’m generally not a huge fan of). It’s a very visually striking issue.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing really wrong. This issue is in the middle of the story, so it doesn’t have that initial WOW factor nor does it have the opportunity to have huge impact by nicely wrapping up a story.
The only quibble is that at one point one of BB’s allies gets frozen, so she’s colored blue. I initially thought that she was a similar blue villain from earlier issues and couldn’t figure out why BB was so upset. But that is a truly minor quibble and I only toss it out to let you know that I still am thinking critically about this comic there just isn’t much wrong with it.
Conclusion: This title has successfully turned the corner from “shocking and fresh” to “quality story”. I plan on staying tuned as long as Casey and Huddlestone plan to publish this title.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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Filed under: Image Comics Tagged: | Butcher Baker, Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker, Dean Stell, Image, Joe Casey, Mike Huddleston, review, Rus Wooton, Sonia Harris, The Righteous Maker, The Righteous Maker #4, The Righteous Maker #4 review
This issue was fun, but I’m still mostly in it for the art. The fight scene was great, but I’m not sure who to root for. Butcher Baker’s complaining about the government coming after him at the end felt hollow to me after he talks about not giving a crap about collateral damage and how in the last issue he just rams cars off the road in the chase, I mean, there could’ve been children in those cars. I guess I want him to beat the villains, but just because they are villains, I don’t really care about Butcher. Huddleston is still in my top five artists at the moment.
The art is pretty kick ass. No one has been able to find where he sells his original pages and I suspect it’s because they’re mostly digital. Oh well….
I hope that the gov’t's involved means we’ll be seeing Dick Cheney and Jay Leno again.