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‘Munchkin #2:’ Advance Comic Book Review

Kick down the door . . . things . . . loot!

Welcome to the second installment of this wacky series based on the epic card game that makes you not stab your friends until it’s time to stab your friends!  Woohoo!

Spyke and Flower begin with typical aplomb: none. (They can loot that, right?  They’ll loot the hell out of some aplomb).  With a little wink and nod at us, the reader, they set out on exactly the type of adventure one could expect.  The sensibility of the game is in full effect, and it feels like the best round between your friends.  Things happen because, and rightly so.  Spyke and Flower don’t have much in the way of lofty goals, or hygiene, but what they possess is a great hunger for loot and for kicking as much butt as it takes to get more.  You know, capitalists.

The Steven Jackson game comes to life under the odd hand of Tom Siddell, who rides the fine line of telling a coherent story with the unpredictability that only this kind of game can induce.  There’s a bit of Monty Python ethos about the whole thing, and it makes for a grand adventure with sublime wit.  Yes, there’s a witticism on display here masquerading as low-brow comedy, and it’s a deft hand that can define that kind of distinction.  Ian McGinty does a wonderful job of adding life to the style of the artwork found in the game and leaves wonderful, little visual gags all over the panels.  He really puts some fantastic tableaus on display, and LOOT!

Continuing the Flying Circus feel, Jim Zub (fast becoming one of my favorite fantasy and nerd-property authors) does a wonderful field book-esque guide to one of the many insane, late-night-pizza-dream-induced monsters from the Munchkin Land [Two words, damnit, no lawsuits!!!  Wait, who owns that property again?  Is it Disney?  Crap!  Uhhh . . . how about Munchkin Bordered-Area-Containing-a-United-Nation-Like-Place-of-Somewhat-if-not-entirely-like-minded-people, no lawsuits!!! (woot)] and gives a reasonable explanation of an unreasonable kind in a reasonable but somewhat unreasonable way . . .  Gives it a touch of a thrill, you know?  Rian Sygh (I see what you did there.) hits it right on the . . . well, he does quite the bang-up job of dealing with every one of Zub’s curveballs and tossing a few pies back on his own.  Well done making a gruesome creature based on a silly part of anatomy ooze with life.

Well, y’all, if you haven’t jumped aboard yet, now’s the time, so you’ll know what’s going on in the next exciting installment.  That’s right, a continuing storyline!  Which is a kinda thing that doesn’t really happen in the game, except that my wife won the first time she played, so now she’s hypercompetitive about it and it’s loads of fun but also a little rude and . . . oh, yeah.  Sorry.  It’s good, go and read it!

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Erik Cheski, Fanbase Press Contributor

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