Vinegar Teeth #1

Story by Damon Gentry and Troy Nixey
Art and Letters also by Troy Nixey
Colors by Guy Major
Published by Dark Horse

When Brick City’s best detective, Artie Buckle, is forced to partner with an inter-dimensional being named Vinegar Teeth, it looks like a match made in Hell. However, being paired with a creature with uncanny abilities and a scariness factor set to eleven might just have it’s advantages- like taking a long nap during surveillance. Things are looking up for this unlikely partnership, which will be put to the ultimate test as Brick City appears to be infested by a horde of possessed townsfolk!

Vinegar Teeth is an odd mix of Eric Powell’s The Goon, HP Lovecraft’s Cthulu, and Will Eisner’s The Spirit. A buddy cop adventure at heart, this book is extremely spastic. The story goes all over the place with super fast explosions of dialogue. If Damon Gentry and Troy Nixey weren’t using the screwball comedies of the 1940s as inspiration for the way Buckle spouts off gibberish like a machine gun with a stuck trigger, I would be very surprised. Things are so chaotic, I actually had to re-read several pages more than once to crack the code to what the main character is trying to say.

Troy Nixey’s artwork is very avante garde here like Batman 100’s Paul Pope. That’s not a bad thing as I like Pope’s pre-World War II German influenced art style. Troy Nixon’s imitation of it works here, especially since nothing in Brick City is as it seems. Having a bloated monster, with some seriously sour BO and tentacles are long as telephone poles, be the new hero of Brick City is about as bizarre as you can get.

I really have no idea where this new series from Dark Horse Comics is going to go. It’s very strange and kinda silly. I generally have a rule with TV shows that I also apply to new comic book series- never end at just one! Since the first episode or issue is sorta like the pilot, there’s kinks to be worked out. Some of these rough spots will probably disappear in the second helping. Plus, it’s really hard to establish a complex storyline with all new characters in just 24-pages.

I’m not completely sold with Vinegar Teeth just yet. But I am willing to give it another try before I hold final judgement.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

This review was originally published January 22, 2018 on Outrightgeekery.com.