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ADVENTURES IN THE RIFLE BRIGADE: OPERATION BOLLOCK #2
"The Pearls of Arabia"
Neutral (3/10)
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DC Comics/Vertigo imprint
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Carlos Ezquerra
Colors: Kevin Somers & Jamison
Letters: Clem Robins
Editors:
Tony Bedard & Will Dennis
Price: $2.50 US/$4.25 CAN |
I didn't laugh once while reading this. Didn't even crack a smile. And while I certainly don't mind a book that doesn't make me laugh, when it has nothing else to offer, I feel pretty insulted when it can't even serve up decent comedy. I can hardly believe this is the same writer who gave us Preacher and Hitman. I can't even believe it's the same writer who did the first Rifle Brigade. This reads
like a cheap knockoff of the first series, with jokes so lowbrow Adam Sandler
would pass them up and the only funny jokes being repetitive ones that any fan
of the first series has already seen several times. Ezquerra's artwork is still
quite nice, and I still have to give Ennis a little bit of credit for audacity
(the elephant's role in this story is particularly outrageous) but this doesn't
show even a glimmer of the talent this creative team has, and I'm offended as
much by the waste of their time as the waste of my money.
On a basic level, there's
nothing particularly wrong with this story. The plot is clearly laid out, the
characters (such as they are) defined well for readers and the pacing pretty
fast and furious. Unfortunately, it feels like all flash and no substance, more
like a drunken frat boy talking about how funny he is than a comedian actually
telling jokes. Ennis's gags are cute, whether it's an elephant dying from
humping an armored car or a Nazi trying to pass as an Arabic assassin, but they
aren't really all that funny. Especially when some of them, such as Milk's
continual attempts to get Darcy to have sex with him, were rundown and old by
the end of the first series and aren't getting any younger.
Ezquerra is doing his best
keeping up with Ennis's demented imagination, and his work is primarily the
reason I wasn't completely bored in reading this. He does a fairly comedic
portrayal of the elephant's love affair with the armored car, a reasonable
parody of a small Arabic country hosting out-of-towners in lavish style (a
staple of the Indiana Jones films, which are also lampooned here) and a
generally nice job on the gross and violent tone the story is going for.
Really, though, this all feels rather stupid. Word games like calling the fictional country "Semmen," serving the elephant's penis as food to get the reactions of the Rifle Brigade and the way that Ennis has driven the one original joke, a quest for a mystical bollock, into the ground, make this almost embarrassing to read. Try to imagine if Ennis had written Preacher with Arseface as the lead instead of Jesse Custer, and that's about how I feel about Adventures in the Rifle Brigade.
In the end, despite my many problems with the series, I can't call it a total failure. Comedy is very subjective, and I'm sure some will find this kind of thing hilarious. And on a basic craft level, these creators know what they're doing and there are no major storytelling flaws or dropped plot points. However, as much as I've often felt that Punisher was lightweight, fluffy stuff compared to Ennis's long-form work, it's masterpiece-level material compared to the dreary and repetitive Adventures in the Rifle Brigade.
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