Smax - Alan Moore & Zander Cannon
I found this one at the library; I've so far usually liked comics written by Alan Moore, so I decided to give it a shot. Jeff Smax and Robyn Slinger are apparently characters from another comic, Top 10, and this is a spin-off story. I don't know anything about Top 10 but the story is more or less self-contained and doesn't make too many references that I didn't get. Jeff and Robyn are in some futuristic version of Earth, and are going to Jeff's homeworld for an uncle's funeral. His home turns out to be a fairy-tale, magic-driven, science-free realm that's seen as a backwards out-of-the-way dump, a place that Jeff couldn't wait to leave and isn't really eager to return to.
We end up learning a lot of Jeff's history and why he left, and he ends up taking care of various unfinished business. There's a lot of humor in it that's hard to explain without telling the whole story, but one of the best things about the book is all the little visual references scattered throughout the book. (Totoro, Devil Doll, Metropolis, Toy Story, Tron, Star Wars, Smurfs, Lord of the Rings, Bob the Angry Flower ... just to name a few.)
The characters aren't especially deep, but the story is entertaining and the artwork is great. It does make me curious to check out Top 10 to see what that's all about.
Fed to jonathan's brain | July 10, 2006
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