O’Dell, Giles – Zoonbats #1

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Zoonbats #1

If I ever bitch about having this website and working on reviewing comics, somebody find out where I live and punch me in the nose. I’ve found out about so much great stuff in the months that I’ve been working on this that I probably wouldn’t have seen for years, if ever, if I was just out trying to find good stuff. This series is great. Giles calls it a “urban fantasy road trip sci-fi adventure novel” and it’s eventually going to be 450 pages long. He’s putting it out in 12 page installments, so it might take a few years to get done, but it’s worth sticking around. This is one of the rare books where you know it’s going to be best all collected (as almost everything is) but there’s still a great flow from issue to issue so you don’t feel like you’re wasting your time getting the little books. I was afraid that anything with a talking alligator and a robot giraffe who could also turn into a dragon would be ridiculous, but he actually pulls it off really well. Fun dialogue, interesting adventures, good art… it’s hard to find much to complain about here. I’m not sure where it’s going yet, but I plan on getting in on the action now. I do have a couple of minor complaints with it, but they’re mostly tiny technical things. Still, maybe he doesn’t know about them, so here goes. The synopsis at the start of every issue is a great idea, especially with a story like this, but you have to leave a little bit to the imagination. They should make you know what’s going on but still be curious to get the actual issues that the artist is talking about. He explains things to death in #6. If he keeps it up, he won’t have any room for the actual comic in a few more issues. I didn’t like all the covers being blue, but that’s mostly because people who see this in a comic store might not take the time to look and see that they’re all separate issues and jut grab one of them. Minor things, like I said. This book is a lot of fun and I’d recommend it to anybody who likes intelligent, thoughtful adventure stories. Check out his website and go ahead and scroll down here for some samples.