By: Grant Morrison (writer), Sean Murphy (artist), Dave Stewart (colors), Todd Klein (letters), Pornsak Pichetshote (associate editor) & Karen Berger (editor)
The Story: Joe the Barbarian wraps up. Will “the dying boy” overcome a hypoglycemia? And what will become of his family’s home?
What’s Good: Sean Murphy’s art is very, very good. There isn’t a single thing I can fault with his art in this issue. He draws in a cartoony style that allows his characters to fully emote and crackle with energy. Murphy also seems to have a wonderful understanding of how bodies move and bend and where weight is distributed because all of his characters just look perfect. When I say “energy” in a character, I mean that when you see one of Murphy’s characters doing anything other than standing up straight with their arms by their sides, you always think they look like they’re running or ducking……You never think they look like an unbalanced mannequin that is about to tip over.
And, the amount of detail he crams into these panels is just really something. The splash pages are really something to behold, but in a mere 1/5 page landscape panel, he draws ~20 rat soldiers complete with swords and shields. Damn, this book is just an artistic tour de force.
From a story standpoint, I have a lot less positive things to say, but I was really pleased to see Jack the Rat show back up. Not only did it give Murphy a chance to draw his awesome warrior rat again, but I felt like the relationship between Joe and his pet rat was the best thing about this comic series. I do question whether a rat shows this much devotion to its owner though. [Or perhaps that was another way to show how sad Joe’s life was. He doesn’t get to have a dog like a normal boy, he has to have a rat and pretend that he and the rat are great friends and that the rat will help him out in a jam like a dog would????]
What’s Not So Good: I quipped on Twitter the other night that Murphy’s art is so awesome that it made a comic series about diabetes and home foreclosure worth reading. And, that pretty much summarizes my feelings on the story. For a story that had such potential early on, I think Morrison tipped his hand too soon by letting us know that this was all in the mind of a boy who is hypoglycemic. Anyone who has known diabetics will tell you that they can have these sorts of “hallucinations”, but knowing what was going on robbed some of the fun from the second half of the series because everything can get better if he can just get some orange juice. [Although that isn’t always as easy as it seems for a diabetic in shock.]
And, the release schedule was just deplorable. To point out that issue #1 came out in very early 2010 is only half the story, because the first 3-4 issues came out pretty much monthly. Back then this story had some momentum and was generally getting positive buzz, but then it started to really slip and the story just wasn’t strong enough for us to really care. My feeling started to be, “Well Sean Murphy is a beast and I’m buying whatever he does next, but I’m not so excited about diabetes anymore.” The ending of this issue is meant to be heartwarming, but it has been too long since those early issues when Joe’s Mom went to the bank to try to save their house, where there was discussion of his Dad’s death in Iraq, etc.
Conclusion: Great art. Seriously. Joe the Barbarian has some of the best comic art I’ve seen in the last year. Unfortunately, the story wasn’t quite as powerful as the art and lost what power it did have due to the delayed release schedule. It is very hard to grade comics when there is such dichotomy in quality between the art and the story.
Grade: C+
-Dean Stell
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Conclusion