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.