Review: PUNKS: The Comics #4

PUNKS: THE COMIC #4
IMAGE COMICS – @ImageComics

CREATORS: Joshua Hale Fialkov and Kody Chamberlain – @JoshFialkov @KodyChamberlain
COVER: Kody Chamberlain
VARIANT COVER: Joe Infurnari
28pp, Color, $3.99 U.S. (January 2015)

Rated T+ / Teen Plus

Yeah, I was late getting to the comic shop, so I am late with a review of the fourth issue of Punks: The Comics.  By the time I was able to get to the shop, the only copy left sported a variant cover by Joe Infurnari.  I really wanted the main cover, which featured a send-up of Todd McFarlane's “classic” cover for Spider-Man (August 1990).

Punks: The Comic is the revival of writer Joshua Hale Fialkov and artist Kody Chamberlain's 2007 small press comic book, Punks.  Chamberlain produces Punks' “original art” with a cut-and-past, do-it-yourself technique and style.  Punks focuses on a quartet of cut-ups:  Dog (a bulldog head on a human figure), Skull (human skull on figure), Fist (a male fist on figure), and Abe Lincoln (images of President Abraham Lincoln's head on various figures).  It's like paper dolls and puppet theater turned inside out and inside again.

As Punks: The Comic #4 opens, Abe, Skull, Fist, and Dog return from their latest (mis)adventure.  Well, dear readers, that means the end of the latest issue of Punks, but wait...  Didn't this issue just begin?  See the stars try to end their show.  And in the “classic” Punks, Dog turns into an alien butt hole surfer, or something like that.

[Punks: The Comic #4 includes some story pages from the original Punks comix.]

Early in my reading of Punks: The Comic #4, I found something to steal for my own writing.  As they say, talent borrows; genius steals.  Who knew that a story about getting to the end of the story could be so much fun.  I think I can build at least a three-issue miniseries out of that.

In the reprint story, Punks proves that it was ahead its time, literally.  I think Punks: The Comics may be trying to match its own surreal and cockamamie beginnings.  Punks is still just scratching at the black ice surface of its potential.  I hope “mainstream” North American comics has a place for this especially funny comic book.

A

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


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