"You're Both Right", in Black Cherry, by Doug TenNapel (writer/artist), Jennifer Barker (letterer)
One thing you can say about Doug TenNapel is he always comes up with some interesting premises. In this case, you have a lazy, cheating, broke mob guy named Eddie, who ends up helping his old priest and a stripper Eddie intended to marry before she vanished protect a space alien from a demon to save the Earth from an invasion.
There's a lot more profanity, graphic violence and nudity than is typical for TenNapel's work, but he explained in an introduction he thought it fit with the characters. Which seems fair. It's hard to picture Eddie as a guy who would refrain from cursing. Although if TenNapel had written him as someone who didn't swear, I would have rolled with it, but then there's all the other mob guys, not to mention the demons. The latter really like to talk about putting dicks in asses, and given the TenNapel seems pretty Christian I can't tell if that's some "homosexuality is a sin" thing, or just a "demons are cruel and would speak in terms of raping people" thing.
There are some funny bits with Eddie's smart mouth. Some of the violence is in the funny vein TenNapel normally works in (one guy gets kicked in the groin hard enough his nuts are shown popping out of his mouth). I feel like the 11th hour introduction of Cherry's complete lush of mom is maybe one moving piece too many, but otherwise, the story is written in such a way that a lot of the parts all come together quickly and keep things focused. The very end of the story requires you to believe the aliens haven't paid any attention to all the heinous shit humans have done in the name of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment