MIGHTY EYEBALL BIG CARD #8
"The Valley of Manga"
Mildly Recommended (5/10)
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Big Card Comics
Writer/Artist: Rurik Tyler
Price: $2.69 US/$4.00 CAN |
I looked down on my desk, and what do I see? A shiny Mighty Eyeball, looking back at me. My apologies to creator Rurik Tyler. This book has been sitting in my home office for far too long with a review. Time to make things right.
The Mighty Eyeball heads into the Mohave Desert to face off against a tornado of catastrophic proportions. But first, he must contend with a secret tribe of Mohave natives, a giant dinosaur with a voracious appetite and a hulking totem-monster. Meanwhile, Crusty, Mighty's eyeball sidekick, attracts the attention of an unusual sample of the local fauna.
There's one word that pretty much sums up Mighty Eyeball: zany. Rurik Tyler fills these pages with silliness and fun... and when I say "fills," I mean it. Just about every word balloon is tongue-in-cheek, boasting some kind of gag or pun. Tyler breaks the fourth wall as well, not only through the characters, but with odd but cute captions at the bottom of each page. The density of the script, though, makes for an occasionally arduous read, and sometimes takes one out of the weirdness.
The density of the script is matched only by the visuals. There are a lot of characters packed into the small panels that populate these pages. It's clear -- both from the story title and some character designs -- that Tyler is trying to capture a manga feel here, but it rarely comes across that way. Mind you, he makes excellent use of the grey tones, and I love the designs for the title character and his pals.
Though Mighty Eyeball entertains, I think it's the fact that Tyler shies away from plot that keeps it from connecting with me. What little plot there is -- Eyeball travels to the American West -- is there simply to set up the jokes. Mind you, the jokes do make me smile as I make my way through an issue. Tyler has imbued the book with an unrestrained quality that is its greatest strength, and perhaps its chief liability as well.
This comic book was not one of this week's new releases.
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