SHIRTLESS BEAR-FIGHTER #1
With some of the most gleefully crass humor, Image presents to us Shirtless Bear Fighter #1. This story follows the adventures of a naked man who was raised by bears, eats flapjacks, and has vowed to kill all bears! The fists fly in this beat-em-up, and they aren’t likely to stop.
Bearrorists have started to move into major cities and all bets are off, all options have been exhausted, and the federal government is considering nuclear weapon strikes. There is only one man that can save us: Shirtless Bear Fighter. There isn’t really much to be said about it after that, considering it’s an action comedy, unless I want to start spoiling jokes and little story punchlines, but how does that get fun for anyone? Then I’m just some jerk slinging out spoilers.
What can be said about Shirtless Bear Fighter is that, it is pure fun. It runs on the energy and momentum left behind by 1980s action movies coupled with a 1970s action comic aesthetic that it leans into hard. This way we can’t misunderstand the book’s intentions, with some of the wildest visual gags used anywhere in a good while.
It needs to be said that these jokes and visuals are fairly adult, but this can be said about a lot of Image’s materials in the past. Just use your best discretion.
I am also going to say my favorite panel in this issue is of the Bear Fighter putting a bear into a suplex. That panel is sublime. I was sort of stunned on the bus this morning when I read it and kind of half gasped and laughed. It came out kind of like a snort-shriek-guffaw.
That’s Shirtless Bear Fighter #1.
Matthew Burbridge is a Digital Editor at ComiXology and he’ll bet $5 you tried to make the snort-shriek-guffaw sound when you read the end of this review.
A comiXologist recommends… Head Lopper Vol. 1
Written by Andrew MacLean, art by Andrew MacLean and Mike Spicer
“That book is weird. Good, but weird.”
When I first said I was going to cover Head Lopper Vol. 1, that was the reply I got, and it happened to be incredibly accurate. At first glance, the art is striking, but off-putting. It looks too-simple. Too animated. Too Adventure Time-y, though its extremely stylized nature is intriguing and eye catching. Since issue #1 it had been on my watch-list, but I had not read it. I was ultimately confused; could a dark fantasy story float with this cartoony look?
To answer this question, it took a decapitation, an evisceration, a call to action, and a seemingly nuanced plot, all within the first issue, to convince me that yes, this story can float. On the surface, the character of Head Lopper, or Norgal, presents himself as the noble, yet savage, Viking akin to the various heroic figures from the Prose Edda. To counter this archetypal hero, is Agatha the Blue Witch, a severed head whom Norgal carries. The two form a relationship like that of R2-D2 and C-3PO, or Batman and the Joker, if they ever teamed-up as a pair.
Agatha happens to be the best part of the story. Despite being without a body, she has a wit and charm that brings the reader in more. Norgal is cool, yes, but we have seen his type before; Agatha, becomes so much more and is integral to the story, to the world, and to the ultimate plans of the evil antagonist.
Head Lopper Vol. 1 is a whimsical read. The story is not deep, but the art keeps it entertaining. The character designs, the world, the little bits of scenery that help tell the story kept me in.
Yeah, we have seen this story before, but this time around it is a little different, a little amusing, and a lot of weird.
Dane Cypel is trying to play into his Viking heritage and grow a beard similar to Norgal, though it is nowhere as impressive. For now…