Aw Yeah Comics is a chain of 3 family friendly comic book stores in the mid-west. Baltazar & Franco opened the first shop in 2012, located in Skokie, Illinois. All three stores have the same mascots; a costumed cat named Action Cat and his adorable insect sidekick, Adventure Bug. In 2013 in answer to customers demands for a comic starring the two heroes, Aw Yeah Comics started a Kickstarter campaign to start publishing their own line of Action Cat/ Adventure Bug Comics. Issue #1 dropped just a few short months later.
The brainchild idea of Chris Smits, Aw Yeah Comics later teamed-up with Dark Horse to collect the self-published comics into 3 treasury trade paperback editions. The volume in which I read and am reviewing (And... Action!) collects the first 4 issues of the first series published from 2013-2014. So, let's get started...
Cornelius and Alowicius work as clerks at the Aw Yeah Comics in Skokie, Il with their manager Hammond Bear. At night (or whenever duty calls) Cornelius and Alowicius take up the mantle of Action Cat and Adventure Bug. Their main nemesis is Evil Cat and his sidekick, the phantom Ghost Bug! Along with a slew of other villains including Zombie Cat (who thinks Ghost Bug is better suited as HIS sidekick), the angry cell phone store mascot Cell-Phone-Guy and the pesky Marquaid the Prawn.
But Action Cat and Adventure Bug don't have to fight crime alone. They're aided by Awesome Bear, the Darling Dogs, and Action Cat...?! See in Skokie, there's 2 Action Cats- one's a boy with a boy bug sidekick and the other's a girl with a girl bug sidekick. And it drives Cornelius crazy that his girl counterpart calls herself Action Cat- that's why he calls her Adorable Cat.
When the two Action Cats aren't fighting with bad guys or each other, they going on patrol for the allusive Goojie-Nana, a polka dotted horse creature. Everyone in Skokie claims to have seen this mythical beast but have never captured it. Can the Action Cats find the Goojie-Nana without driving their sidekicks crazy?
A very fun read. Now that I know about the real life Aw Yeah Comics shops, it makes the reading of these books much more enjoyable. This volume is essentially the pilot episode, so there's some kinks that need to be worked out with pacing and plot lines. Though this is Baltazar and Franco's baby, they have lots of guess artists and writers crafting stories set in the Aw Yeah universe. Some of them are very good and some stink like sour fish on a hot day.
But every story by the creative duo of Baltazar and Franco were home runs. Those stories didn't have a lack of quality or imagination. By the fourth chapter of this volume, they were creating most of the material and the level of brilliance and fun made reading the adventures of Adventure Cat and Adventure Bug that much more AWESOME!
Worth Consuming
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
Cornelius and Alowicius work as clerks at the Aw Yeah Comics in Skokie, Il with their manager Hammond Bear. At night (or whenever duty calls) Cornelius and Alowicius take up the mantle of Action Cat and Adventure Bug. Their main nemesis is Evil Cat and his sidekick, the phantom Ghost Bug! Along with a slew of other villains including Zombie Cat (who thinks Ghost Bug is better suited as HIS sidekick), the angry cell phone store mascot Cell-Phone-Guy and the pesky Marquaid the Prawn.
But Action Cat and Adventure Bug don't have to fight crime alone. They're aided by Awesome Bear, the Darling Dogs, and Action Cat...?! See in Skokie, there's 2 Action Cats- one's a boy with a boy bug sidekick and the other's a girl with a girl bug sidekick. And it drives Cornelius crazy that his girl counterpart calls herself Action Cat- that's why he calls her Adorable Cat.
When the two Action Cats aren't fighting with bad guys or each other, they going on patrol for the allusive Goojie-Nana, a polka dotted horse creature. Everyone in Skokie claims to have seen this mythical beast but have never captured it. Can the Action Cats find the Goojie-Nana without driving their sidekicks crazy?
A very fun read. Now that I know about the real life Aw Yeah Comics shops, it makes the reading of these books much more enjoyable. This volume is essentially the pilot episode, so there's some kinks that need to be worked out with pacing and plot lines. Though this is Baltazar and Franco's baby, they have lots of guess artists and writers crafting stories set in the Aw Yeah universe. Some of them are very good and some stink like sour fish on a hot day.
But every story by the creative duo of Baltazar and Franco were home runs. Those stories didn't have a lack of quality or imagination. By the fourth chapter of this volume, they were creating most of the material and the level of brilliance and fun made reading the adventures of Adventure Cat and Adventure Bug that much more AWESOME!
Worth Consuming
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment