Tuesday, March 25, 2014

BLOOD! GUTS! BOWLING! A DanCon review of STRANGLED WITH A HALO #1



Meet Onas. He’s an ugly, bald man who has just entered a midlife crisis. He’s compartmentalized his life into these segments: nagging, driving, public humiliation, bullshit and bowling. He’s stuck with a wife he hates (and the feeling is mutual), a job he can’t stand and a life that has become one big pit of misery. Bowling is his only escape, and even that, he has to confess, is boring. But it gets him away from the garbage of the rest of his life.


He’s been having bad dreams lately. The world dissolves around him into a hellish landscape, and the people who live there are no longer human but hypersexed mutants and demons. And then there’s the Grinning Man, who might not actually be a dream after all.


You see, after a relaxing evening knocking back pins, Onas walks out and accidentally insults a group of bikers. As per his usual run of bad luck, he prepares himself to be beaten to a pulp. Instead, he’s stabbed, but it doesn’t take. That’s because the Grinning Man comes to his rescue and slaughters the bikers. Reinvigorated by his brush with death, Onas feels like a man for the first time in years. The first thing he does? He gets him some puss-ay. The only problem is, good times don’t last long. There are demons after the Grinning Man—who turns out to be Asmodeus himself—and they’re very eager to find him. Eager enough to tear Onas’s life apart.


And that’s how we’re introduced to the world of STRANGLED WITH A HALO, an indie book which promises to be a formidable force in Artists Alley in the coming years. It is cleverly written by Jake Young with a lot of great one liners. He sets the tone perfectly with Onas’s grim, depressing narration. You can’t help but feel sorry for this poor fucker. You know this series isn’t going to end well for him.


Mazzart is the perfect artist for the book. His work is jagged and harsh, in your face and brutal. He makes Asmodeus look somehow like a hard-partying biker, yet at the same time a very menacing villain. There is a dream sequence in which Onas blows his brains out that must be seen to be believed. And that last page . . . wow. Again, you’ve got to see it to believe it.


This book’s just getting started. Better buy your ticket before it’s too late to take the ride.


STRANGLED WITH A HALO #1
Written by Jake Young
Illustrated by Mazzart
Published by CAW Comics
18 pages

$4

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