The Alt-Right DM

The new title from Arkhaven dropped yesterday.  I continue to mutate here inside the chrysalis of my mother’s basement from fat slug of an RPG dork into the colorful and ever so delicate beauty of a comic book nerd, so we have to talk about it.

Alt(Q)Hero.  Not to be confused with Alt(Star)Hero or Alt(Avalon)Hero.

Also not to be confused with the nickname my wife’s boyfriend’s kid’s friend’s channer bros gave me for when I put on a dress and demon horns and go down to the local library to read to toddlers on Transgender Freakazoid Appreciation Day.  That would be Alt-Queero.

We are talking about the aptly named first issue of Alt(Q)Hero: Where We Goon(e).  It’s like this comic was written just for me, baby!

Roland Dane, the action hero with the action hero name, serves as a door-kicker for the US Department of the Treasury.  He notices something he shouldn’t and gets pro-slash-de-moted to the secret service detail for a fat Senator slated for extermination by the Deep State.

Or does he?

Stick a pin in that question, we’ll circle back around after a quick and dirty review.

It’s really good.  Roland is a bit of a blank slate right now.  We like him because he is the protagonist, but he doesn’t have any real personality just yet.  He does the right thing, repeatedly, and that’s enough for a covert ops title like this.  It’s full of action with three set pieces.  It establishes a world where paranoia is a necessary survival skill.  It rolls old Roland from the mundane world of counter-counterfeit operations into high stakes espionage of private versus public shadow organizations.  The art is first rate and Chuck “The Legend” Dixon’s writing sings like a New York Met soprano with her job on the line.  It’s taut, it’s efficient, and it’s layered like my usual triple-stack Big Mac lunch.  People compare it to “The Punisher”, which should make “The Punisher” feel good about himself and help him feel like he might one day achieve his goal of being just like Roland Dane.

It’s that good.

But I know the question that you sick perverts really want answered:  What about dem big ol’ tiddays?  Relax.  The team has got you covered with a lady that isn’t quite covered.

No comic book meal is complete without a cheesecake dessert.

You know what I think?  I think that Senator wasn’t the target at all.  I think that the Deep Creep State was after Roland the whole time, and that Senator Probablepedo was acceptable collateral damage.  Everything about this comic screams ‘trust nothing’, and I find myself wondering what tine little detail in the first panel I didn’t notice is going to crop up seven issues from now when it proves to be a vital clue that unravels everything.

That’s just the kind of thing Chucky-D does.

I also hope Chucky-D never, and I mean never in a million years, reveals the identity of Q.  The way that character floats in and out of the narrative means that any reveal, no matter how clever and mind-blowing, cannot possibly compare to the mysterious image in my head.  This is one case where the Mystery Box stylings of J. Jonah “Star Wars Killer” Abrams work and work well.  Much as I want to know “what’s in the booooox?”, I want to hang onto that mystery even more.  Q’s whole identity IS his mystery.  Take away the mystery, and you take away his identity.  You take away everything that makes Q…Q.

I have every confidence Chuck “Big Swinging” Dixon won’t let us down, because as a wise man once told me, “Trust the plan.”

My fingers are crossed, but I trust the plan.

You should too.

Buy it, nerds.

The latest issue of Alt(Star)Hero dropped last week, and everything was so hectic I didn’t get a chance to review it.  Well, now I’ve got a chance and here’s a stunner for you – I liked it!

Redshift in a neck brace and a battered Michael Martel held remind us that the former got the royal Matthew Shepherd treatment when he tried to stop the latter from leaving one part of the European Caliphate for another part of the European Caliphate without paying his proper jizz-ya tax.  Martel earned his stripes in the process of wiping the pavement with Captain Europa’s handsome mug.  They look like I feel these days.

Episode Six: the Cast Embiggening presents Team Sellout tracking Team Tommy Robinson through the catacombs of Paris, hence the name “The Dark Hunt”.  Or maybe the title is a reference to the red-eyed sewer dweller.  (It wouldn’t be an Alt(Star)Hero without six new named characters introduced in this issue, would it?)  The new guy with the red eye saves Michael and…uh, the other guy* from the Eurotrash.  Get it?  Brits see where I’m going with this, and Kangaroo-chokers, too.  Anyway, the Darkhunt guy puts the DyNationalist Duo on a train for Italy where they can be safe, which after my recent encounters with those noodle-slurpers seems like a molte benne bad idea.

You’re probably bored with me saying that this issue is my favorite one yet.  Too bad.  It is.  Here’s a fun thing to do.  Cliff Cosmickal is the guy who does the art for Alt(Star)Hero, and he’s getting better with each issue.  Don’t believe me?  Let’s run a quick side by side comparison:

Everything about the art in that second panel is better than everything in the art in the second panel, and that’s just after six issues of work.  I’m telling you nerds, by the time they hit Issue 20, Pope Frankie One will be calling Cliffy-boy to come re-do the Sistine Chapel with Alt(Star)Hero characters.  Rainbow F(l)ag up there looks so much better now that he makes me feel all funny inside, like when I try and fail to climb the rope in gym class.  And don’t get me started on Dynamique – that carrot topped caped crusader looks so cute lately that she’s got my waifu-pillow jealous of all the time I spend with Dynamique these days.  Maybe it’s the coloring, I don’t know, but it’s so much more pleasing to the eye.

Uh, that’s about it.  Go buy it at the Arkhaven store and not Amazon, so that Bezos gets a few less dollars with which to buy a billion dollar blowee from that Dirty Sanchez broad.

*I can’t remember his name.  Maybe Grug am not smart enough for to understanding comickal books.