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Cryptozoo Crew Volume One
By Hervé St-Louis
October 23, 2005 - 19:55

NBM Publishing
Writer(s): Allan Gross
Penciller(s): Jerry Carr
Inker(s): Jerry Carr
Cover Artist(s): Jerry Carr
ISBN: 1561634379



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Cryptozoology is the unrecognized discipline that researches foreign creatures such as man-eating plants and monsters. Creatures such as mothman, the cave monkeys and the yeti are all subjects of cryptozoologist Tork Darwyn. While he’s busy discovering another exotic creature, wife Tara, a botanist with a taste for fashionable goods and shopping, tries to keep her husband out of trouble. Cryptozoo collects several strips that have appeared online.

There are several little stories and continuity adds up with them. The stories are simple and elicit some brief chuckles. Much of the strips compares men’s attitudes against women’s. Unfortunately, Tara is kept out of too many stories. The tales would work better is the pair was more often together, playing on one another’s weakness. They do sometimes, but it doesn’t go far enough and the resolutions are too simple.

The artwork fits the well, as these are short stories. They are caricatures that are perhaps too exaggerated. Although husband Tork is the one who’s supposed to enjoy jumping in a pile of mud to capture a creature, he’s drawn like a metrosexual. He’s too classy, although super buffed. He doesn’t feel like the ultimate alpha male. As for Tara, it’s the opposite. She doesn’t look like a shopping goddess.

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