Thursday, June 12, 2014

Guest Review - Kult #1

   This guest review is by Lyle Tucker, who kindly offered to join the team covering while Chuck takes a brief vacation.


   Kult #1, Dark Horse Comics, 2011. Written by Jeremy Barlow, art by Iwan Nazif, colors by Michael Atiyeh.

   The cover depicts a guy in regular pants and a t-shirt fighting a multi-jawed demon coming out of the guy's floor with its ten-foot-long tongue wrapped around the fist about to be futility thrust at this Hell-spawn. The cover asks the age-old question: WILL HE SAVE THE WORLD... OR DESTROY IT? Even before starting this four-part mini-series I have a hunch as to the answer, but, hey, it's a coin toss, isn't it? Probably a two-headed coin, but still...

   We start off at a wedding. After the ceremony a man approaches the bride and grabs her by the wrist, asking her with a demonic smile, “Do you know what's at the bottom of the Abyss?” Apparently she doesn't, because he transforms in to a huge lizardy demon with a large Venom-like writhing tongue (ya gotta figure these monstrously long-tongued creatures have to always be chomping down on it by mistake – eating's gotta be a bitch), and he shoves his forearm through her head, grabbing onto and crushing the head of the person standing behind her for good measure.

   Yes, it's that kind of comic book. * sigh *

   We then meet the main character, Tomas Zenks, who's divorced and fights with his ex-wife over changing the dates of visitation by his two young daughters, and the dialogue is every bit as hackneyed as you would imagine it to be. Being a parole office, Tomas checks in on one of his charges, who is acting weird, and then decides to also turn into a long-tongued many-toothed demon, which sets off a string of events dragging Tomas deeper into finding out who he actually is and how he's gonna be the one to save the earth.

   Ho-hum.

   The writing, art and coloring are nothing to write home about. There's nothing terribly bad with this comic except for its mediocrity (it didn't help that on the second page we find this grammatical error, “...moving toward an truth too terrifying to comprehend...”).


Grade: C-

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