Bomb Queen IV: Suicide Bomber
The Deal: Image unleashes the fourth miniseries starring “America’s Best Villain” — Bomb Queen. This comic is a humor book (very black humor, by the way) and is intended for mature audiences. And, as I previously stated, Bomb Queen is NOT a superhero. She’s a very bad person and rules over her town, New Port City, with an iron fist — and the citizens seem to love the abuse. It’s written and drawn by Jimmie Robinson, who started waaaay back in the day with his own indie book called Cyberzone.
The Good: Focusing on the story, Bomb Queen is fucking hilarious. And what makes it so funny is that Robinson is not afraid to “go there” with his humor. He’s not afraid to make jokes about taboo subjects like pedophilia, and he’s not afraid to show totally overblown images of sex (straight and otherwise) and violence. And, honestly, only at a company like Image could Robinson get away with this type of sick, twisted humor. So, hooray for Image. When it comes to his art, Robinson continues to soar. His work is a strange mix of straight American comic art with a drop of manga influences. As the years progress, I’ve noticed his line work getting cleaner and cleaner; at this point, he’s managed to reduce his images to the least amount of lines necessary to create form … and that’s kind of cool.
The Bad: My only problem with the book is that the story really follows on the heels of the last miniseries. I wasn’t lost or anything, but Robinson referred to the previous series a ton of times — I haven’t read it yet. Luckily, all previous Bomb Queen issues have been collected in trade paperbacks, so it’ll be easy to catch up with old story points.
The Verdict: Oh, just buy it, you sick bastards!
The New Warriors
The Deal: It’s the latest incarnation of that cheesy hero book from the 1990s: The New Warriors. If you haven’t been keeping up, the old team of Warriors was killed by the villain Nitro, sparking Marvel’s Civil War. But maybe not all of them are dead. Oh, and the book is written by Kevin Grevioux, the screenwriter behind the Underworld film series.
The Good: First off, I must admit that I used to be a fan of the first New Warriors series from back in the day. Yes, it was cheesy, but I have a soft spot in my heart for lame superheroes. That being said, I’m intrigued by this new version of the team. Writer Kevin Grevioux has weaved an interesting mystery regarding the new team lineup — which may be helmed by a resurrected superhero — and I definitely want to see what happens next. I also like the fact that the writer has used some of Marvel’s big storylines of the past few years as springboards for his story. The art is modern, but in a good way: flashy but, thankfully, uncluttered.
The Bad: The story seems a little one-note — and that’s probably because, aside from the mystery of who are these new New Warriors … well, that is the whole story. The series could stand a subplot or two.
The Verdict: I’m sticking with this series … if only to see the outcome of this first story arc.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.
