GtPGKogPYT4p61R1biicqBXsUzo" /> Google+ Comic Review: Sally of the Wasteland #1-#5 Titan Comics | I Smell Sheep

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Comic Review: Sally of the Wasteland #1-#5 Titan Comics

Sally of the Wasteland #1-#5
written by Victor Gischler
Genres: Horror, Science Fiction
32pp
Format: Softcover
Frequency: Monthly
Age:15+
Titan Comics

Southern Louisiana, 82 years after the Fall.
The apocalypse has come and gone, leaving behind a withered, ravaged landscape of wreckage and mutant crawfish. Still, you gotta laugh, and Sally does, often using her beloved shotgun, Bertha, as the punchline!

Inspired more by lust than common sense, and by a teenage desire to protect Tommy, the object of her desires, Sally leaves her bar job and joins the deranged crew of the Mississippi Duchess on a mission into the remains of New Orleans.

Saving the remains of civilisation plays second best to keeping her sweetheart safe as our smart and sexy princess of the wild frontier runs a gauntlet of gigantic genetic freaks and roving gangs of blood-hungry barbarians!

The ever-so-cute but ever-so-slightly-insane Sally is the wayward daughter of writer Victor Gischler (X-Men, Angel & Faith, Noir) and artistic up-and-comer Tazio Bettin. This first issue in a fantastic new series proves Armageddon can be fun!

WITH A VARIANT COVER FROM REVIVAL AND HACK/SLASH’S TIM SEELEY!
I love me some post-apocalyptic pulp and, boy howdy, did this series deliver. The fever dream Victor Gischler must have had to come up with this one, I don't even know how much mescaline it'd take, because I thought Beasts of the Southern Wild was gonna be the craziest post-apocalyptic tale set in a ravaged Louisiana. Oh, how I was wrong.
The world is a wasteland, quite literally and in keeping with the series title, with mutated monstrosities taking up the space left in the wake of humanity’s downfall. Oh, sure, there are the pockets of survivors spread here and there, but society is a distant memory and for one brassy young vixen, namely Sally, all the world amounts to is a lot of hard work and one dreamy hunk named Tommy. So when Tommy raises his hand to help a stranger with a weird piece of technology head out to New Orleans for answers and maybe one last chance at restoring civilization.

With all the unapologetic panache of a couple true pulp hounds, Victor Gischler and Tazio Betton offer up one of the wildest dystopian thrill rides I've seen in a good long while. Sally, at first glance, might seem like pure cheesecake, but her personality is as charming as it is borderline psychotic. She is no damsel, and she's no hero either, but she is all bad-ass with her shotgun Bertha and whatever other weapons she has at arm's reach. The rag-tag bunch she boats down the Mississippi with are all afforded moments for their own foibles to shine, whenever the ceaseless pitfalls and perils don't have them fighting for their lives.

The series might just be the kind of ultra-B movie fare you didn't know you were waiting for. If there is something to complain about, it is one particular swerve in the storyline that feels like a jumping of the tracks onto a completely different storyline, but even then the zany and the heart of the issue, Sally protecting Tommy, are never lost.

If this series was a movie, it would find itself in good company with the likes of Escape from New York and Army of Darkness. If you like the sounds of that, find these comics. If it doesn't, run and hide before the Bamazons get cha.

4 1/2 stars






Gef Fox

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