Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates, Review | Tagged: frankie boyle, jonathan ross, Mark Millar

Number Crunching CLiNT Magazine #1

Published Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:19:25 -0500

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:23:24 -0500

Comments

What's the comic? CLiNT, from Mark Millar anf friends. Featuring Kick Ass 2, Turf, Nemesis and Rex Royd.

Cost: £3.99 ($6.17)

Comics story pages: 71

Price per page: 6 pence (9 cents)

How many haven't been seen in print before: 22

Fucks in the issue: 12

Shits in the issue: 8

Cunts in the issue: 0

Well apart from… Seriously, don;t make that joke. It's old.

Surprise 1: The larger art really gives Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards' Turf room to breathe, when the lettering made it feel cramped in the Image comic size. As a result it makes the likes of Kick Ass look sparse. It is a shame that they didn't choose to reletter all the comics reprinted inside, to take advantage of the different dimensions.

Surprise 2: It may look sparse, but Kick Ass looks softer and more considered at this size, the colours more like pastels, the panels like wide open spaces.

Surprise 3: Rex Royd written by Frankie Boyle and Jim Muir (Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolf III) suffers from the poorest art in the book, newcomer Michael Dowling's sub-Mignola style looking like a poor indie superhero book from the late nineties, but it's the most intriguing story in the magazine, with a grasp on the possibilities of comic book storytelling that belie their inexperience in the format, with unreliable narrators, repeated pull-back-and-reveals, understanding of panel layout to affect the narrative flow and a heady mix of underplaying and overplaying individual scenes for effect.

Not-A-Surprise: Steve McNiven still benefits greatly from a sculpting colourist, not the two-tone colours seen in Nemesis.

Articles: Sub-Shortlist, with no Danny Wallace to save it.

Chance you'll buy the second issue: 100%

Chance your mum will buy the first: 1%

Chance anyone browsing will at least take a look: 30%

Chance they'll actually recognise Frankie Boyle on the cover with his beard? 30%

Verdict: This comic is being sold on spectacle, on event, on doing the thing that no British adult comic book since Viz Comic has achieved – survive. Using a plethora of celebrity names to force it into supermarkets. It's the modern day equivalent of Look In in that respect. But will it work? No idea. Will it still be here in two years time? Well, it probably has the best chance of anything in a very long time.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!