Read It

By Josh Rosen

tasteslikeevil.livejournal.com

This appears to be part of a series or something with the comic I reviewed yesterday (in that they all have similar covers, and are mounted on a weird cardboard square). However this one I don't have the proper name for, as it's covered up on the back by a barcode. I'm sure someone will be along to correct me soon enough.

This one is quite different from yesterday's in that it is actually about "Rex Manface (and his plucky sidekick Sally)" journeying through a pyramid in search of its secrets! Adventure! Exploration! Monsters!

Of course we can't have the traditional adventuring man and useless female represented in fiction any more (or at least we shouldn't, I definitely don't want to read that shit any more). So here we have Sally dragged along on an adventure she didn't want to do, but constantly being more competent than Rex, saving his life from traps, sword-fighting skeletons, and certain death multiple times before they finally get to the treasure.

Of course it's not that simple. The evil, lisping mummy guardian of the treasure tells them that they must inexplicably spin the dreidel of death (did ancient Egyptians even have dreidels?) to see if they get the treasure or not.

I really liked this. I love adventure fiction with all its ghost fighting, treasure finding action, but to be honest the "traditional" stuff is kind of boring and horrible. (Oh my goodness some of those old pulp sci-fi things I've read have been so racist and misogynistic, eek.) Here the characters are portrayed in ways that are cliched (ie. guy is stupid but lucky, girl is smart and competent), but at least they are modern cliches that aren't really demeaning.

The art is a bit lacking in detail, but the small panels used for most of the comic don't really allow for that much detail to be included. Overall it's quite good and the action flows well throughout. I will admit that the design for the lisping mummy didn't really click with me, and when viewed front on, in its full lisping glory, I kind of wondered what exactly I was looking at.

But overall its good stuff, and I hope that Rosen has written some more of the adventures of Sally as I'd like to read them.