Written by: Jody Leheup & Sebastian Girner
Art: Nil Vendrell
Color: Mike Spicer
Letters: Dave Lanphear
Review: Will Dubbeld
What The--?!
The Tick
God Hates Astronauts
Madman
And now, Shirtless Bear-Fighter.
Well, let's not be hasty. It's got to prove itself worthy of the Hallowed Halls of Irreverent Comics, but Shirtless Bear-Fighter is off to a good start.
Preordered on title alone, SBF was a welcome sight when it showed up in my stack at the ol' LCS.
Hoo, boy, where to start...
Shirtless Bear-Fighter starts off with a bang, showcasing a young, amorous couple necking in the woods and promptly subjected to a bear attack.
Luckily, our titular character is on hand to deliver a rescue.
The first panel revealing our hero depicts him striding from the forest, all chiseled and hairy and nekkid as the day he was born, pixelated swingin' dick and all.
The ensuing fracas is a sight to behold, readers, proving you haven't lived until you've seen a nude comic book hero deliver a belly-to-back suplex to a bear...
Pure comedic escapism ensues. Shirtless Bear-Fighter lives a solitary life in a log cabin, passing the time eating flapjacks and fighting bears until, in true 1980s action movie form, his county needs him.
Bears begin to attack the cities and the FBI calls upon SBF to defeat the ursine threat facing the nation.
To quote:
"But the world needs the Bear-Fighter"
Is that ludicrous enough, or is there more?
There's more...
Shirtless Bear-Fighter's origin ups the ante, revealing his adoption by a bear couple after discovering him as an infant abandoned in the forest.
An infant with a full beard and a giant, swingin' pixelated dick.
We're treated to SBF's humble childhood and adolescence, raised by bears in their bear-town and fighting evil lumberjacks.
Bear-towns are kinda like Ewok or Smurf villages in case you were curious...but with bears.
This is an incredibly strong start to the series from pacing to plotting to the art. The inherent ridiculous premise aside, it's a well-crafted book. The colors are bright and cartoonish, and the art is stylistically in the same vein, reminiscent of books like Super Dinosaur or Atomic Robo. The cover (at least the cover I picked up; I'm sure there's a half-dozen variants...) was laid out like an attention-grabbing movie poster featuring Shirtless Bear-Fighter at center, expressive nipples and all, flanked by supporting cast. Among the characters are what appears to be a War of the Worlds/toilet hybrid cutting down trees as well as what appears to be an anthropomorphic pig dressed as a wizard.
Holding a handful of bacon.
If that image doesn't grab you by the pixelated dick, nothing will.
I've a few minute nits to pick, however. Every time SBF punches a bear it's accompanied by the SFX "bear punch!", which was funny the first couple of times but grew a bit tiresome. The only other gripe I had was a scene in which a woman FBI agent is derailed by her superior silencing her with funny cat pictures on his phone. She goes from all-business to stereotype "awwwwww!" gooey girl and, although the scene is played for laughs, it just seems like a cheap grab at low-hanging fruit.
My only other concern is the longevity of a book based around a beardy, semiclothed guy fighting bears, but we'll have to stick it out and see where the story goes.
In any case, Shirtless Bear-Fighter is absolutely worth reading in one is a fan of some silly-ass comic books. There's no indication of pretentiousness and every indication of bright colors and gratuitous cartoonish violence remaining the status quo.
Recommended.
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