We Kill Monsters TP by Red 5 Comics
STORY: Christopher Leone & Laura HarkcomWRITER: Christopher Leone
PENCILS: Brian Churilla
INKS: Hilary Barta, Brian Churilla & Richard Ellis
COLORS: Ronda Pattison
LETTERS: Jeff Powell
It’s just one more day. You wake up, fix a few cars, mourn your father’s passing, awkwardly interact with your ex-girlfriend and help your socially-inept genius brother slay a giant blue monster.
Things get weird when said genius brother drinks monster brain juice and is miraculously healed by it.
We Kill Monsters is a fairly cut-and-dried tale. Comic readers, sci-fi pulp fans, anyone who’s watched sci-fi-ish TV in the past 25, anyone who’s seen a Bruce Campbell movie – we know the story. Small town is invaded, just about overnight, by monsters. Real, Grade A B-movie monsters with horns and rubbery skin in every color of green, brown, red and blue. Horns and spikes and fangs abound, some of them even in biologically logical locations.
You know everyone says it: there is nothing new under the sun. However, clichés are clichés because people pick them up off the shelf and read them, week after week. We Kill Monsters is should be no exception to this, because anyone who likes the awesome pulp action and classic plots should read it, because Red 5 does quality classic pulp.
What makes We Kill Monsters good isn’t the time-honored tale it tells, but the way it’s told. I know, I know. Y’all have heard that one a thousand and one times before, but if you ignore me, it’s your loss. This time, the story is all character with a bit of plot to tide you over while you find out just what they’re going to try next.
Our protagonists are Drew and Jake Basher, a pair of mechanics. Drew’s the older one; responsible and card-carrying member of the Common Sense League. (Which, if you didn’t know, doesn’t have many members from the Comic Characters Union.) Drew is the younger brother; a socially inept genius, he’s got a bit of mad scientist in him and a bit of the lovable dumb guy in him. He’s sort of an idiot savant but, other than his fumbling with people, doesn’t have much ‘idiot.’
These guys are as blue collar grease monkey as you can get: drinking beer, flirting with barmaids and fixing cars. The Requisite Girl, Vanessa, tends bar (and may or may not own the bar), lives with her father, who is a retired
sheriff and used to date Jake, back before they broke up over Drew.
She’s got a new beau these days; a marketing executive for a breakfast cereal company who drives a Beamer and has a smile that gleams in even dim light. He screams ‘used car salesman’ before he gets a speech bubble on paper.
The art in this book is consistently good; sometimes, you get a lot of characters who look the same, who don’t look like the kind of person they’re written to be. Not We Kill Monsters. From Jake’s chubby cheeks to Drew’s Fonzie hair to Vanessa’s girl-next-door chic, the characters are unique and bring a lot of life to the story. Awesome as that is, for me, it’s the colors in this book that really drive the art. Everything is bright and vibrant jewel tones, giving depth and motion to each panel.
That art makes things like eating dead monster bugs and drinking blue brain juice a bit more visceral that it might other be. And it’s really that gross bit of culinary masochism that drives the story. Jake’s got a bit of problem (and no, I won’t tell you what it is) that means he has to keep drinking monster fluids or he’s in a lot of trouble, which is part of why the Basher brothers got out killing monsters instead of running for the hills like everyone else.
That, and one of the monsters eats Vanessa’s Dad. There’s nothing like a bit of rage-fueled revenge to get a damsel in distress and there’s nothing like rescuing said damsel to inspire heroism like McGuyered air-compressor
ballistae mounted on jury-rigged armored trucks.
And if that doesn’t convince you to read this book, nothing else I say will.
The end of the story is more surprising than I thought it would be; it’s the first time in a long time a pulp plot has made me raise my eyebrows. I will say, however, that I’ll never look at breakfast cereal mascots in the same light ever again.
We Kill Monsters. Pulpy, creative and absolutely fun to read.
