Saturday mornings are slowly reverting back into the animated landscape of fun they once were, and one of the new kids' shows that struck me as being particularly clever and entertaining is Fillmore, which is something of an N.Y.P.D. Blue for the tykes. The creator, Scott M. Gimple, is also the creative mind behind Heroes Anonymous, so I was curious to see what he had in mind. There's plenty of potential in his take on super-heroes, which focuses on more slice-of-life elements. The problem is that the book starts out as a super-hero spoof and suddenly shifts into a more grounded, human tale, and the two tones don't really mix well here.
The heroes of Gothopolis have gathered... not to fight a common enemy or save the planet from a cosmic crisis. No, they've come together to share their problems, and the sudden appearance of Attaboy, one-time sidekick to the Midknight, opens the door for the 20-something hero to tell his story. For years, Attaboy had hung up his tights and lived the normal, dull life of a slacker. Meeting the right girl and making some observations about the latest super-villain to plague the city opens his eyes to new possibilities, though.
Jothikumar's artwork is appropriately light, but it's surprisingly replete with detail. He's meticulous when it comes to the backgrounds and settings... sometimes, too much so. Some scenes are a bit busy, and the backgrounds can distract from the main action. Mind you, such instances don't come often in the book. I enjoyed his goofy super-hero designs. Overall, his work reminded me a great deal of the style of Tim (The Copybook Tales, Batman: Gotham Adventures) Levins.
I was expecting a farce, and initially, that's what Gimple delivers. After a while, though, the book took on a surprisingly down-to-earth tone. The funk in which Toby, AKA Attaboy, finds himself is something to which we all can relate. Gimple tells a believable and universal story here about taking responsibility and finding one's way in life. Just as the art reminded me of The Copybook Tales, so did the plot. The script is particularly sharp at times -- "Houston, we have an asshole" -- and Lynn's dialogue makes her instantly likable. The book is being promoted, in part, as being from the creator of Fillmore, but parents would be well advised to steer the kiddies away from this book, though.
For all the book's strengths, the problem is that Gimple doesn't seem to know what kind of story he wants to tell. When he makes fun of super-heroes, he does so quite well, capturing a tone reminscent of The Tick. But that satire doesn't work with the slice-of-life genre elements that dominate the book. It seems like Gimple's got a lot of say about super-heroes, but not all of it belongs together in the same title.
