Public Enemy No. 1
American Mule Entertainment
I think it's the part where Flavor Flav flying kicks a terrorist in the face while shouting "Yeah, Boyeeeeeeee!," thus foiling a plot to blow up the White House with a nuclear bomb. That probably would have made the news. Besides, I've seen Flav on The Surreal Life, and he just doesn't have those kind of moves anymore.
Regardless, Chuck D's comic book does capture some of the heroic militant vibe of the hip-hop stalwarts' old aesthetic, and it gives D plenty of time to drop science. While Flav, Professor Griff and the others are busting terrorists, D's giving a lecture at a local college.
From there, things get a little too serious for a book about a rap group fighting crime. There's a plot about a teenager with superpowers and a conspiracy of white dudes in suits out to rule the world (like they didn't already).
As a blast of late-'80s/early–'90s nostalgia, the book offers some fun, and it's nice to see D taking his message to a new medium, but it's not a medium it works well in, judging from this mediocre undertaking. Plain old prose may be a different matter, however, as the strongest portion of the book is the introduction he writes.
Elephantmen No. 1 Image Comics
Richard Starkings' Hip Flask comics have always been about weird genre discordance, a sort of funny-animal comic book cross-bred with a crime noir film. With new series Elephantmen, Starkings and his one-name artist Moritat offer a nice, accessible introduction to their weird world. In the 23rd century, mankind will create human-animal hybrids called "elephantmen" (though they have the heads and builds of a variety of African fauna) to fight wars on its behalf.
In this first story, elephantman Ebony Hide loiters in front of a Hooters (in the year 2259, buxom women with hot wings is still a winning business plan), when he's approached by a precocious little girl, who proceeds to pepper him with innocent questions, each evoking a bad memory.
It's a pretty simple story, and not entirely original (well, other than the part where the grim, troubled adult resisting the child's innocent questions has the head of an elephant, of course), but a dramatic and oddly moving one nonetheless.
Its funniest moment is its prologue, however, as Starkings makes fine use of President Bush's quote from his State of the Union speech about "the most egregious abuses of medical research: Human cloning in all its forms ... creating human-animal hybrids." It sounded like science fiction when Bush said it, so I guess it was only a matter of time before someone actually used it in a science-fiction story.
Strange Eggs Presents: The Boxing Bucket Slave Labor Graphics
As far as characters go, The Boxing Bucket is about as nutty as they come. As the name implies, he's an anthropomorphic bucket who wears boxers' shorts and boxing gloves and, um, boxes.
He stars in this 48-page, 15-story anthology by a variety of creators, and for such a weird character, he seems awfully versatile, taking part in a From Hell parody, inspiring the Ramones to create punk rock, riding a Nazi zeppelin and hanging out with Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.
His versatility may have something to do with the great leeway editors Chris Reilly and Ben Towle give their inspired grab bag of contributors (whether he has a face or legs or can talk, and whether he's bucket-size or human being-size varies from story to story). Among those telling tales of a bucket that boxes are regular SLG creators Black Olive, Kerry Callen and Jen Feinberg, alternative comic-strip creator Derf, Zig Zag creator J. Chris Campbell and plenty of others.