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Skullkickers #1
Skullkickers, a new
series from Image, kicked off its story with monsters, guns and healthy
dose of humor. Plus, it's got an awesome title. It's certainly the
makings of an awesome fantasy series, and therein may be the problem;
it's just way too formulaic.
The issue, written by Jim Zubkavich with art by Chris
Stevens and Edwin Huang, is promising enough. It opens with an
axe-wielding dwarf and human gunslinger fighting a fat werewolf and
dishing out a few choice one-liners. Sure it's cool to see guns in
fantasy, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Yeah it's always
awesome to see a gruff dwarf being a badass, but that's even less
original. The archetypes that define Skullkickers aren't
necessarily bad, there's a reason we see them so often, but that means
there needs to be something in this series that makes it stand
out.
There's asskicking and intrigue and plenty that makes
you want to laugh. The only problem is, it usually doesn't, and even
when it manages too, the fantasy elements of the story never seem to
amount to anything new or fresh.
The art is decent, nothing special, but sufficient
for the story they're telling. The characters have decent chemistry and
are plenty fun, but nothing especially novel or unique.
It's not a bad start I admit, there's certainly
things I liked about it and moments that made me chuckle. There is
unfortunately, nothing here that would sell me on future issues. The
creative team is really going to need to step up in issue two if they
want their work to stand out and earn that awesome title of
Skullkickers. |
