It’s time to enforce a moratorium on apocalyptic dystopian tales of the future. Enough already. No more decimated, radiated, fumigated worlds of debris and bug-out bags. I don’t care how hopeful, endearing, prophetic or alarmist you wanna be, it’s enough. Look we get it, the world’s a bit screwy right now. Yet as Artists not everything has to veer straight into a big ol’ kablooey. Maybe you want a kablooey. Maybe you’re hoping for one. You’re so disgusted by what you see you just think to yourself, let’s just end it and go back to one and then you start writing from there. Don’t. Resist the urge. Rather write from the place of ‘where do we go to create the world we want to from now’. Where are those heroes? I want to read those stories. The collective consciousness may be screaming death, destruction and annihilation but you can emit a solitary peep of ‘look how amazing it can all turn out’.
So here we have another ‘the world exploded, it’s empty and junked up’ love story. Honestly this comic could have been called ‘Once upon a time in Downtown Los Angeles last Tuesday’. Downtown LA, or LA in general is about a week away from rowboats careening through zombie sea monsters and Target overstock. Maybe Jason Aaron, the writer, took an Uber from Downtown LA through Echo Park to Hollywood and landed in Venice and thought the entire plot of this story through! I’m glad we can be an inspiration to you Jason. You had about a 22% chance of being kidnapped so it’s a shame that couldn’t be arranged but maybe next time you swing by you’ll get that ‘trapped in a truck on its way to a Luciferian ritual in the desert’ story you know you want to write.
The premise: End of the world, butch chick rows boat through
end of the world, ends up meeting someone in a high rise who has a bunch of
stuff including their dead parents locked up in a room. Butch chick gets stuff
and leaves as High Rise person gathers stuff and runs after her. Oh, and there’s
a moment where High Rise falls hard in love with Butchy. Cute. First of all, I
thought the High Rise chick was a chick until about 3/4 through the book until
the captions confirmed he was a dude; totally threw me. I thought I was reading
a burgeoning futuristic Lesbo story not a Boyle Heights Babe in Bangs meets Burbank
Mop Top Boy with Toys story. I mean, either is fine but High Rise could easily
pass for a chick. If this is a pronoun switcheroo and now I’ve become insanely
insensitive because I didn’t realize that when they said He they meant Her
because He/Her romances are racist and frowned upon unless it’s a He/Her/Them
falls for Ze/Zey/Zem who’s got a polyamorous/panpanbangbam thing going with a
Xex/Xexem/Xexes, I apologize. Today I saw a a video of a girl with multi-colored hair and a nosering in her 20s complaining that people are just using specific pronouns with her and that they should instead use as many as they can when speaking with her. So now I have to rotate, guess and pepper them in from an approved list when speaking to people, just to be sure? Reason #11373 why I hate to leave the house.
The issue ends with a jump ahead again into the future where High Rise now looks like an old dude in a compromising torturous position and…okeedoke! Alexandre Tefenkgi, who was the main artist on the wonderful ‘The Good Asian’, kills it once again with the art so it was a delight taking in the visuals. As mentioned in my most recent review I absolutely loved Jason Aaron’s King Conan story. So, I’m willing to go along for a little bit with Downtown LA in February 2023 based on street cred alone. When I picked up my pull list recently the woman who is my favorite at the shop made a remark that this was actually a really popular comic. Look at me being all hip and with it. You know what else is really popular? Kablooey Books. I say Phooey on your Kablooey!
Rating: 7.7
Verdict: Pull
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