Adam Chamberlin may not have ever actually done it with a girl before, but, man, his cup runneth over with It factor, that indefinable quality that makes someone a success. A handsome, charismatic 21-year-old Christian and virgin, he's a youth minister and a leader of the national abstinence-until-marriage movement. The head of the Chalice Channel thinks Adam has a bright future in television ministry; his mother thinks he has an even brighter future in politics.
Just how good is Adam at selling abstinence? Good enough that he's able to seduce both a groupie who throws herself at him and a paid prostitute into not seducing him. He has faith that God wants him to be with his long-distance girlfriend, who's with the Peace Corps in a terrorism-troubled part of Africa, and no one else. For the rest of his life.
But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and so do comic-book writers. Writer Steven T. Seagle, who's joined by Becky Cloonan on art, seemingly kills off Adam's fiancée by the end of the first issue of this intriguing new series. What happens to a young man's faith when he saves himself according to God's plan, and the big man screws him over this bad? Cliffhangers don't get much more intense than the one our modern day Job is faced with here.
Sky Ape: King of Girls
AIT/Planet Lar
Some things are just better when experienced together instead of separately. For example, chocolate and peanut butter in Reese's Cups. Also, a jet-pack and a gorilla in Sky Ape.
Millionaire talking gorilla/freelance crime-fighter Kent Madge is the titular hero of the Sky Ape comics, the latest of which sets him and a gigantic supporting cast of silly superheroes and sidekicks up against a fiendish enemy: The King of Girls.
This villain is bent on "training a group of socially retarded, sexually inept losers into well groomed, stylish lotharios," as one character explains. His majesty is teaching them the finer points of fashion, food, wine and foreplay to help them win over women, but not for the noble pursuit of romance with the possibility of marriage; rather, they're turning into cads in search of sexual conquest.
The three writers responsible for this deliriously silly conflict seem to occasionally forget all about it as they go off on weird, gag-filled tangents about the sex lives of superheroes, what the Teletubbies do in their spare time and the life of a monocle-wearing Minotaur, but the script's welcome wandering is full of so much sharp wit and so many pop culture non sequiturs it hardly matters. Richard Jenkins' simple and fun art is equal parts cartoon and coloring book, making for a funny book that's actually a funny book.
Though we're only in March, I feel quite confident in declaring Sky Ape this year's best comic book about a gorilla who wears a jet-pack.
Coffee and Donuts
Top Shelf Productions
What do you really need to be happy? Is it enough to have a warm dry place to live, something good to eat and someone you like to share your life with? Or is a big bag of cash preferable? Those are the questions loquacious anthropomorphic cat Dwight and his silent companion Jules wrestle with in Max Estes' simple graphic novel. The two cats live in an unused dumpster and wake up every morning to find that someone has left them coffee and doughnuts. Dreaming of something better, they embark on a short, disastrous life of crime that coincidentally loops back to those coffee and doughnuts.
Estes' sequential art eschews the regular rectangle and square panels for circles, as if the entire adventure is being viewed through the hole of a doughnut. The art is as simple as his story, but boasts a strong, illustrative quality that calls to mind something between woodcuts and New Yorker cartoons. It's a charming look for an equally charming book.