Comic Review - Battle Beasts #2

            Aside from a little bit of hype upon the announcement of the series (basically to hit us all in the nostalgia bone-which is somewhere between the funny bone and the Fone Bone) I have not heard much being said about the Battle Beasts four issue limited series by Bobby Gurnow and Valerio Schiti.  Issue two dropped this week, and someone needs to take notice.  Like I said in the very brief synopsis of issue one, I was not expecting much when I picked it up, basically just a “oh yeah I remember the Battle Beasts” kind of moment.  What I got instead was a comic that was not only very well drawn, but succeeded in building a story that gave a reason and a purpose to the conflict inherent in the very name of the series (and subsequent toy release).

Cover:

            The cover (also by Valerio Schiti) is a decent, if totally generic cover.  The illustration is adequate but the characters are very stiff and posed, almost as if they were action figures.  While this does nothing to tell you what is going on in the story inside, it also takes away from the interior art in that it is simply not as good. The interior art, as you will read below, is full of movement and vibrancy that is just not present on the cover.  I have to imagine that the cover was therefore drawn before issue one was even completed because it really does not look like Schiti is comfortable with the characters, whereas the guts of this comic show an artist that knows not only how to draw, but how to best utilize the characters that, while humanoid in nature, move somewhat differently and have very different body shapes.  The coloring is also noticeably different on the cover than the guts even though that is done by the same person (Claudia SGC) as well.  This is just further evidence that generic covers do not work.  I am sure that IDW asked Schiti to create a bunch of pinups before he started drawing the book so they could have stuff to solicit, except that this cover does not make me want to buy the book and does a disservice to the interior.

4/10 – I put this more on the publisher than I do the artists (especially considering what they are capable of on the interiors).

Story:

            We pick up where we left off from issue one (naturally) and see what happens when the Battle Beasts start landing on Earth.  We are introduced to more of the Battle Beasts, but they are mainly throwaway characters there to be beaten up by the three main heroes.  We are also given some more clues as to the magical maguffin known as the Dread Weapons.  Of course this comes through exposition along with the introductions of the “good” Battle Beasts to Bliss and Tate (the humans that are obviously there to help save the world). 

Gurnow does a decent job of giving each character their own distinct personality and their own “voice” but fails in creating something without falling back on generic unoriginal plot devices.  Sure, almost every story needs a maguffin, and this is a good way to bring the Battle Beasts to Earth, however the real question is why?  Why even involve Earth at all?  You have loads of anthropomorphic characters at your disposal to create worlds aplenty, why bother bringing them to Earth?  The “sister protects her brother because her dying mom told her to” thing is also kind of weak, and done to death.  Plus the whole “we’ve reached a break in the action, now it’s time to introduce everyone and basically setup the premise of the book” thing that took two pages while fighting took up the rest of the book.  Don’t get me wrong, the fights are well done and the pacing of the conflict actually works very well, but to do that for an issue and then shoehorn in actual important story point in the final few pages seems bushleague, especially in a four-issue miniseries. 

The lettering is pretty shoddy as well.  I am not a fan of the font used and indicating that a different language is being spoken be using the same font in the same style word balloons but just making that font bold is pretty lazy.  It took me half the book to realize that that was the intention because the majority of the conversations are between characters that speak the Battle Beast language.  There are better ways to represent a language barrier than this, especially if the dialectic is of an alien nature.

4/10 – It’s not the worst book I have read, but it doesn’t utilize the source material in the best possible way and tends to trend too much toward the generic as opposed to the innovative.

Art:

            This is the best part about this book, hands down.  I alluded to it earlier in discussing the cover, but the line art and the color are in perfect harmony here and it is pretty impressive.  The art has almost an Adam Hughes-esque quality to it (on the humans anyway) that is nice and is obviously helped out by a very competent colorist.  I really like all of the designs of the animal characters that are introduced in this issue.  Schiti does a good job of making them similar enough that we know they are working together, but designs their armor to coincide with the strengths/weaknesses of their species. 

While I enjoy the character design of the gorilla, it looks like his left arm was chopped off and is floating away.

This is a great panel and would have made a better cover than what we were given.

I enjoy this sequence and the way Schiti lays out these three panels.

Bliss gets shot through the shoulder with an arrow earlier in the book and yet it is somehow magically gone on this page.  Not sure what happened.

Bliss looks like the love child of Adam Hughes' Wonder Woman and Zooey Deschanel.

Crap, I just gave comic-porn fan-fiction writers more ideas.

8/10 – I really enjoyed the art here and would like to see more of Schiti’s work once this series wraps up in October.

Overall:

6/10 – The great art saves a mediocre story and an uninspired cover.  I would recommend this book for the art and the fact that you have anthropomorphic warriors beating the tar out of each other.  Just don’t come here expecting to be blown away by a great story.