A comiXologist recommends
The Paybacks

Superhero work is a tough and thankless endeavor.  This isn’t new in the genre.  In fact, that’s one of its more relatable qualities, and writers have gone to greater and greater lengths to make their particular demigod look and feel like a real person.  Writers Donny Cates and Eliot Rahal decided to give them financial woes and it really works.  What if the Batmobile wasn’t paid off on time?  What if Iron Man drank his money away and couldn’t afford his suit?  Well then The Paybacks are coming to collect.

I understand it’s probably best to review a title from its opening issue, but this series snuck by me in the first round so I’m making up for it in issue #2.

The Paybacks operate in the universe of Cates’s first book, Buzzkill, and the humor reflects that.  Names of heroes are puns, clever jabs (specifically at 90s comics), and blatant references to friends of the creators.  Issue #2 opens with our…heroes(?) accepting their new assignment from a Satan-shaped silhouette, Mr. Pierce.  Mr. Pierce is the wallet.  Mr. Pierce is the bank.  For those of you who don’t understand loan-sharking, you’re already on the internet, and have numerous sites to look up definitions for all sorts of things at your fingertips.  Come back after you’ve looked up loan-sharking.  When you get back, just understand that The Paybacks are Mr. Pierce’s Repo-Men.

Mr. Pierce’s order for this issue seems to be the Justice League, or the Cates/Rahal equivalent of the Justice League.  It is time to collect on the Hall of Justice, with hilarious and grisly results!  Now understand that I have to stop there.  I can’t go into much more detail beyond that.  At least not without spoiling a joke or a detail of this inaugural story arc of what is shaping up to be one heck of an Ongoing series.  Nobody wants me to do that.  I want you to read it.  You want to read it.  So read it.

Cates and Rahal make some of the most relatable super-powered characters I’ve read in a good while without the means of familial loss, shame, or whatever clichéd pathos that’s been done to death.  It is done with financial strains, addiction, and just general lethargy grown into from being around the block.  After that they’ve strapped bombs to their team and said “Collect or boom.”  

With art by the proven talent Geoff Shaw (A Town Called Dragon) and colors by the inimitable Lauren Affe the fights are dirty in the best way, and the characters’ acting between the action scenes doesn’t feel like a dull lull or poorly paced.  And this so often can be the case with slice-of-life superhero books.  I give this one a full pass, and my full recommendation.

-Matthew Burbridge

Read The Paybacks on comiXology.com