By: Joe Casey (writer), Mike Huddleston (art & colors), Rus Wooton (letters) & Sonia Harris (design)
The Story: Turns out Butcher Baker’s bomb may not have killed all the super-villains in that prison he blew up.
What’s Good: I worried in my review of Butcher Baker #1 how Joe Casey would keep up the shock value in this second issue. I mean….in issue #1 we saw the protagonist involved in a full on orgy in his home that had penis door handles. When your readers are bracing for “Round 2” of that, how do you live up to expectations?
Well, the answer is that Casey doesn’t even try to out-shock his first issue. And, that really shouldn’t be too much of a surprise coming from a pro like Casey; if you keep the volume at 10 all the time, people stop paying attention. Instead, he devotes this issue to plot and character development. So while this issue wasn’t as outrageous as issue #1, now the reader can at least say what the comic is about: Some of the villains survived Butcher Baker’s bombing of their prison and they want revenge. It’s simple and clean even if it isn’t terribly original. BB also looks like he is also going to have to deal with that cop from issue #1 who he ran off the road in his big rig. The cop gives off a vibe of being a more serious version of Roscoe from Dukes of Hazzard. It’ll be very interesting to see what part the cop gets to play in the bigger story.
But, the real star of this issue is Mike Huddleston’s art. Wowie! He uses two different art styles for this issue. For the scenes of BB and the cop, he uses a very rough and scratchy style that is very alive. This art is almost B&W with just the occasional accent color or color wash tossed in. It looks really nice. Then for the scenes with the super villains (including the cosmic entity that looks like a slightly plus-sized woman with a schwanz), he busts out a style where the linework really takes a complete back seat to his colors. The cosmic chick (?) is really stunningly colored with a riot of reds, purples and blues and the lightning based villainess is also a very striking blue. This comic is really something to look at.
What’s Not So Good: Well, I guess I kinda missed the shock value of issue #1. Granted, you can’t have an entire comic miniseries that revolves around penis door handles, but one of the things I enjoy about Joe Casey’s creator-owned material is that he can do whatever he wants and sometimes that means you’ve got Dick Cheney and Jay Leno bringing a trio of hookers to the retired superhero to entice him into one more mission. The cosmic chick would have been a shock if we hadn’t had that spoiled by the teaser marketing last fall.
Conclusion: Hey look! There is an actual story under all that shocking stuff from issue #1. It isn’t a hugely deep story so far, but there is something there. The big attraction to this issue is Mike Huddleston’s art because this issue looks like nothing else on the shelves right now.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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