Okay, right now you’re thinking one of two things: 1) “Return of the Super Pimps?! How stupid!” or 2) “Return of the Super Pimps?! How cool!” Well, across the board, I think that type of “with them or against them” attitude is what Return of the Super Pimps is destined to provoke. For people simply fascinated or entertained by “the image of pimps”—the gaudy clothes, the impossibly long and flashy Cadillacs, the throngs of beautiful women aching to fulfill their every desire—this is the book for you. For individuals more repulsed by “the reality of pimps”—the blatant and heartbreaking exploitation of women, the abusive nature of the ‘profession,’ the drugs, disease and inherent misogyny—this isn’t the book for you. What SP does is attempt to reinvent pimps as some heroic force of an impoverished community, completely lacking the bad elements that literally define “pimps.” In a sense, SP tries to take the contemporary “cool” connotation of the word “Pimp” and supplant it into a time and place where the reality of the word existed. So, does SP pull it off? Not yet.

In the writing of this book, Richard Hamilton creates an alternative past in which pimps were cool, trendy, civic-minded individuals fighting the good fight for the underprivileged. But regardless of his best intentions, the stigma of the word “pimp” and all of the ills that it evokes is impossible to escape or rewrite—no matter how alternative the reality. It could be argued that Hamilton is simply attempting to have a little fun with this series. However there aren’t any jokes here. Everything about this book is done with an irrevocable seriousness. These “pimps” are genuinely supposed to be portrayed as heroes. Perhaps if this had been a more comedic book, SP would have been a more entertaining read. But, as it stands, Hamilton has not managed to write his characters out of the shadow of their real world counterparts. Maybe future issues will be able to claw themselves out from beneath the stigma, but it hasn’t happened with this first issue.

On pencils, Lilises Roman’s reductive style, overall, does a good job of getting the story across and keeping these Super Pimps moving. While, at times, the styling can be a bit melodramatic and hokey—occasionally evoking memories of the very same Blacksploitation films which inspired the series—these times are in the minority. Roman has a tendency to jump around from time to time in his narrative directing, but I’m confident that this is something that will begin to fade as the series continues. Roman is filled with potential and I think that, as his art matures, many of the minor “hiccups” in his styling will work themselves out.

Overall: 2 out of 5. A love or hate book with potential to succeed or self-destruct.