Richie Rich: Rich Rescue #2

July 17, 2011

Title: The Pursuit of Pesos and other stories

Writers: Buddy Scalera, Tom DeFalco, Matt Anderson, Patrick Rills
Art: Marcelo Ferreira, Armando Zanker, Amy Mebberson, James Silvani
Colorist: Dustin Evans, Jake Myler, Amy Mebberson
Letterer: David Hedgecock
Cover: Jack Lawrence
Editor: Matt Anderson    
Publisher: Ape Entertainment/KiZoic

Rich Rescue’s latest gig sends them to the depths of the jungle, hired by a museum to find a legendary diamond. The gem turns out to be magic, the team gets hurled back in time, and soon Richie and company find themselves being chased by dinosaurs. The fun starts here, folks! It’s not a bad little story, but it’s a bit unfocused. There isn’t even anything there to tell us where it takes place – they unearth a pretty generic old temple and go back to face a bunch of generic old cavemen. The adventure sequences work well. It seems like Buddy Scalera and Marcelo Ferreira are doing their best to conjure up some classic adventure tales, the likes of which we got from Carl Barks back in the day, and that’s all to the good. They just need a little work.

The back-up features are of varying quality. The first one, where Reggie “wins” the use of Irona for 24 hours, is really very funny, and a nice way to give Richie’s arrogant cousin a little comeuppance. On the other hand, Cadbury steps up next for a terribly trite story where a bunch of terrorists invade a concert screaming gibberish about the band’s “pro-environment” agenda. The villains of the piece are soulless cutouts, almost lacking even in a second dimension, let alone a third, and while you don’t expect a story of this nature to be Shakespeare, there could be at least a little thought put into giving them a motivation that has at least some form of internal logic. The funniest part is when Cadbury throws out the line “I will take formal over cliché any day.” Congratulations, Cadbury, you’re both.

I like this title, and I’m glad that Richie Rich and company are back. But there’s definitely room for improvement.

Rating: 7/10

Gargoyles (2006 Series) #6

October 25, 2007

Gargoyles #6 (Slave Labor Graphics)
By Greg Weisman, Gordon Purcell & Dustin Evans

This is one of those comics that would probably be really good if there only weren’t such a huge gap between issues. Now to be fair, unlike other comics the delays in Gargoyles aren’t creative, but legal (i.e. jumping through hoops with the Disney licensing people), but no matter the reason, it weakens the comic. This issue marks the halfway point of the first story arc, “Clan-Building,” and herein, Goliath encounters someone very unexpected. The memory gap from last issue aside, the fight scene here is engaging and moving, and I find myself loving these characters just as much as I did when their show was on the air back in the day. It’s a strong book worthy of a better schedule. I just hope that the wrinkles are smoothed out, because with the new bimonthly Gargoyles: Bad Guys series scheduled to launch soon, it would be wonderful to get a monthly helping of Gargoyles.

Rating: 7/10

Go-Go Gorilla and the Jungle Crew Summer Fun Special #1

August 4, 2005

Quick Rating: Great
Title: The Origin of Go-Go Gorilla & The Terror of Twinchilla

When evil strikes Jungle City who can save the day? Go-Go Gorilla and the Jungle Crew!

Created By: Brent Erwin, Mike Hall & David Hedgecock
Writer: Mike Hall
Pencils: Dustin Evans
Inks: David Hedgecock
Colors: Dustin Evans
Letters: Mike Hall
Editor: Mike Hall
Cover Art: Scott Shaw!
Publisher: APE Entertainment

Anyone who’s been a member of Comixtreme for more than a week probably knows of my strange, some would say disturbing love of the 80s classic Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. For the longest time, I thought I was alone. So you can imagine my excitement when I saw this new offering from APE Entertainment, an obvious pastiche of that long-neglected gem by people who really love the superhero/funny animal genre. (And if there was any doubt that these guys were directly influenced by Captain Carrot, it was erased when I realized that the cover was drawn by Cap’s co-creator, Scott Shaw!)

When you start reading the comic, you immediately get the flavor of a silver age yarn, starting with the vision of Jungle City itself. This is a city where humans and animals evolved concurrently, and all species are at about an equal level of development – one which is comparable to that of our own world, but has a lot of unique charms, like a practice of using vines to swing above busy city streets. When a human citizen of the city nearly gets plowed in traffic, he’s saved by the caped simian Go-Go Gorilla! And with the set-up out of the way, it’s time to go into the origin story. It’s pretty familiar stuff: a humble museum janitor wiping up around a strange extraterrestrial meteor, just on the night that a pack of villains try to swipe it.

Following the origin story is “The Terror of Twinchilla,” where we’re briefly introduced to the rest of the team – Mega Mouse, Anubia, Shellhead, Quickcat and Lady Water Dragon as they converge to do battle with the menace of a gargantuan, two-headed chinchilla. If it sounds absurd, that’s because it is, but delightfully so. The story is a little weak in that there’s not really enough room for the fight once we’ve met each of the team in one-or-two page vignettes, this one definitely could have used some padding.

The plots and scripting, however, are superb, endearingly familiar to fans of similar properties and entertaining enough that you’d like to see more of these characters in future specials. These are clearly guys that love what they’re doing, and it rubs off on the reader.

The art, by Dustin Evans and David Hedgehock, is really sharp. It’s a clear, cartoony style that is practically begging to be animated. The designs for the characters, particularly the armored turtle Shellhead, are a lot of fun as well.

In the back of the book, there’s even more fun in the form of a few activity pages – a word scramble, a maze, a word search and a connect-the-dots puzzle, plus a decoder you can cut out and use to decode Anubia’s magic spells. (A lot of fun, to be sure, but you’re hesitant to actually do any of the activities, because who wants to mess up their comic in this day and age?) Plus there are plenty of great pin-ups.

This comic book is just plain fun, something we don’t get nearly enough of these days, and it’s a book that parents who were children of the 80s can easily share with their kids today.

Rating: 9/10