Posted in: Comics, Review | Tagged: awa studios, Comics, dave bautista, deliverance, jurassic park, Mann's World, niko walter, science fiction, upshot studios, Victor Gischler

Mann's World: Class Warfare While Hunting Dinosaurs Don't Mix

AWA Studios' imprint Upshot Studios continues its wave of genre comics with high concepts and social commentary. Mann's World #1 by crime novelist Victor Gischler and artist Niko Walter is the latest, a Science Fiction adventure that combines Jurassic Park with Deliverance.

Mann's World is a resort planet where rich tourists can go hunt genetically-engineered dinosaurs. Celebrity Fighter Duncan Sharpe takes his friends to have a relaxing weekend drinking, getting laid, and killing dinos. Vince, the narrator, seems to be the more sensitive of the bunch, somewhat reluctant about coming. He's getting over a breakup and senses their privilege as rich guys lording it over the locals who have been reduced to servicing them. One thing you should never do is piss off the locals who service the equipment you use, the transportation, the machines that keep you safe. Duncan and the group of bros are privileged dicks, and they're going to live to regret being privileged dicks.

It doesn't take long for the comic's political or social commentary to pop up in the first issue. The name of the game here is class warfare, the haves against the have-nots. Gischler foreshadows the exploitation and predatory nature of capitalism right from the start when the characters talk about Mann's World's origin as a colony that got turfed out as a tourist spot because it doesn't have natural resources to exploit. Duncan might be a rich celebrity, but he got his status from entertaining the rich and powerful with his athleticism, and he takes out his latent resentment and insecurity on those even less privileged than him. It's probably not an accident that Walter draws him with a more-than-passing resemblance to Dave Bautista. Once again, the first issue of an Upshot comic is always the first half of the setup of the story, but Mann's World pretty much declares its intent by the end of the first issue. The hunters are going to become the hunted, and we'll see how that plays out in the rest of the series.

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