Publisher: AfterShock Comics
Writer: Sean Lewis
Artwork: Antonio Fuso
Lettering: Dave Sharpe
Release Date: 18th July 2018
As soon as a book starts throwing “Fecks” about, you know it’s trying a bit too hard to be “Oirish”. CLANKILLERS – the latest offering from AfterShock Comics, on sale this week – starts with a Feck, and it doesn’t really get much better from there.
Aftershock tell us in the blurb that “Finola has a problem—her father is losing his mind. All the old king cares about is power…and Finola thinks power is stupid. Finola thinks her vicious older sisters are stupid. Finola thinks the royal court is stupid, and above all she thinks the clans across the country are stupid. So, she makes a plan with her good friend Cillian: Let’s kill all the clans. And then, we go for dad”.
The problem is, I’m not buying into the Irishness, not in the same way I did with Slaine. Finola’s motivation isn’t particularly engaging, she just feels capricious. And don’t get me started on the Nun’s wimples… or the fact that the first Irish Cardinal wasn’t born until the 1800’s…
Sean Lewis has been lauded in the past for his work on the likes of “The Few”, “Saints” and “Coyotes”. The dialogue is fine here, I just find the tale a little stale, maybe rushed and undercooked.
Fuso has been around the block once or twice and has worked across all of the big publishers, His style feels angular and scratchy, but manages to remain dynamic. The throwing about of gratuitous boobage however, just doesn’t do anything for me. It’s not titillating nor grotesque, it just IS and feels unnecessary.
I really wanted to come out of the end of this first issue with the feeling that I would want to read more, but I didn’t, and I feel a little frustrated and cheated by that (really cheated, I’ve read the comic three times now). Unless I’m asked to review more from the series, I won’t be back. It isn’t horrible, but it isn’t far off.
Rating: 2/5.
The writer of this piece was: John Wallace
John Tweets from @jmwdaredevil
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