Comics / Comic Reviews / More Comics

Hell Yeah #1

By Dan Horn
March 7, 2012 - 19:09

Joe Keatinge is the Eisner-winning editor of Popgun, sure, but can he write? Last month he had a strong showing with the relaunch of Rob Liefield's Wonder Woman facsimile, Glory, and this month brings us Keatinge's Hell Yeah #1.

Hell Yeah certainly doesn't introduce a premise that's going to blow readers' socks off conceptually. It rehashes ye olde "advent of superhumans" trope quite liberally. There's an interesting alternate history feel to Hell Yeah #1--the superheroes have ended the Gulf War and instituted a sustainable period of peace and prosperity--but I suppose even that's been done and re-done to death. What's truly intriguing about Hell Yeah is its lead, Ben Day--not to be confused with Ben-gay.

Ben Day is the son of the US Marine who witnessed the rise of the metahumans firsthand, being rescued by them from a war-torn Kuwait. As a teen Ben developed super-powers of his own, but really sort of shitty ones. He's kind of fast and kind of strong and has a weird barcode tattoo that he simply woke up with one morning. He's kind of useless, and he's constantly trying to prove himself by starting brawls in downtown Portland. Of course, this gets him in loads of trouble with his college dean and his classmates.

What Ben doesn't know is that his lame tattoo might actually mean something incredibly profound, his parents are hiding something possibly sinister from him, and hurtling out of the time-space continuum is a ship full of alternate reality girls desperately looking for Ben-gay... err... Ben Day, rather.

I like where this is going. It's a mature-reader superhero serial with a creamy center of comic book cliche pastiche. Really my only gripes are that it's nothing astounding thus far, meaning it hasn't really drawn me completely in, and after seeing all the press releases from Image for this book I was expecting something a little more punk rock and a little less university hipster. The story's a bit too clean cut and conventional, gruesomely exploding heads and buckets of blood aside. However, that clean cut sensibility doesn't translate to the uneven, yet woefully straight-forward artwork of Andre Szymanowicz. There are brief glimpses of brilliance in Jason Lewis' palette choices, but the interiors of this book, overall, miss wide to the right.

In the end, I would have to recommend this book for its clear potential and enjoyable quirks, but I have to warn that this isn't something so ambitious, cool, or bizarrely original as to be the next King City or Orc Stain. There's just not much presented in regards to counter-culture or media innovation here, besides an interesting meta commentary on comic books themselves. But, for 32--count 'em, THIRTY-TWO!!!!--full pages of story for only $2.99, you really can't beat this value. Eat your hearts out, Big Two.

Rating: 6 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12