Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer(s): Tommy Lee Edwards, Noah Smith
Artist: Dan McDaid
Release Date: 26th March 2014

Hands up who’s seen a Troma movie. You know the kind: ludicrous plots, cheap gore, wooden acting and young women with big bosoms and bigger hair. Those weird, straight-to-video movies you’d see in your local video shop (remember them) with titles like The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘em High. Writers Tommy Lee Edwards and Noah Smith have clearly seen a few Troma films in their time and Vandroid is their attempt to reproduce the lunacy of those films.

Part of an ambitious multi-media project, Vandroid is supposedly a comic adaptation of an unfinished film from 1984. In reality, the film, its ‘rediscovered’ trailer and sample track from the synth score – both of which are available online – are all a fake, created as a tribute to the simpler (crazier) days of 80s Hollywood, making this the comic book equivalent of films like Grindhouse or Hobo with a Shotgun.

The art is decent, and the use of different sized and shaped panels really conveys a sense of action, disorientation or velocity. With a lot of pages being shown from a low angle it captures the over the top shooting style of a lot of the films it is aping and pages stuffed with lots of little panels also work as the comic book equivalent of the choppy and fast paced editing of those movies. Like the deliberately scratched film prints used to give an old movie look to Vandroid’s cinematic cousins Machete and Grindhouse, the art by Dan McDaid harks back to the work of seminal 80s artist David Mazzucchelli and gives it a real 80s look.

Like the films Hobo with a Shotgun or Machete, this comic has a goofy, tongue in cheek story (an android made from van parts and military technology is hunted by a corrupt corporation) and is quite funny at times. However it also suffers from the same problems as those films; all its ironic posturing leads to a slightly hollow and distancing look at a type of film rather than a smart reinvention of it.

Rating: 3/5.

The writer of this piece was: Joe Morrison
Joe is Freelance film journalist based in Glasgow.
You can also find Joe on Twitter.