Posted in: Comics | Tagged: angel tovar, Aspen Comics, BubbleGun, HRL, marco lorenzana, Mark Roslan

Bubblegun #4 Review: Doesn't Really Offer Anything New To The Sci-Fi Genre

In a dystopian cyber-punk future where corporations rule, robots patrol the streets, and it always looks like night time, a group of renegade heroes challenge the status quo by being a bit zany and ultraviolent.

Among many other stories and properties, this plot describes Bubblegun. This latest issue finds their android friend, Asher, captured by the evil corporation what created him. They plan to use his fantastic abilities to take over the world. Meanwhile, their hired mercenaries plot against them.

Our heroes have just survived a disastrous fight and must plan to save their leader and rescue Asher from the evil corporation.

It's impressive how something clearly trying so hard to have its own style and appeal can be so horrifyingly generic. I wasn't kidding about how this plot could describe so many other films, videogames, and comic books throughout the past 30 years.

Worse yet, so much of the comic is exposition dump after exposition dump. We gotta figure out what the Skynet wants with Asher. We gotta figure out what the mercs Waylon Yutani hired want to do to take power. We gotta figure out how the Teenage Mutant Punk Rock Stormtroopers will do to save messiah-droid from the Tyrell Corporation.

A lot of Bubblegun rides on the relationship between the members of Bubblegun. They're all fairly broken people, and they're supposed to find solace in one another. It almost works. But a lot of it is just so trite and generic. Molli looks up to Devyn and flips out when she thinks Devyn is dead. Molli and Kyo have some form of relationship. Kyo has a dark past. Molli and Devyn should probably be a couple instead, but for some reason it we have the heteronormative one.

When the fight scene comes up, it manages to be badly vague and generic too. It goes for a massive spectacle instead of showing the reader what is actually going on. For a comic that values its aesthetic and it's punk-rock violent heroes, that was a pretty weak way to go with the big blowout.

Also, Devyn loses an arm early in the comic. It's bloodless, and she takes it pretty well. However, Molli still comments on how much blood Devyn lost.

Also, it really wants you to know that Molli and Devyn have boobs. It really, really wants you to know that.

This comic isn't good. It has its charms, and it has intent. However, it's all so middle of the road that there's nothing this can give you that other, better entries in the sci-fi action genre can't give you. I recommend Running Man. It's my favorite Schwarzenegger movie and Richard Dawson is an absolute delight in it.

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