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The title of Dark Horse Comics new series would be good as a mantra or a mission statement. Even a memoir, given the medium, since I’m working off the idea that Cullen Bunn has a hidden message in these hysterical pages. Then again, having growing up in a world where every Boogeyman was a cash cow, I’m always wondering what’s lurking in the shadows. So when a comic screams Monsters Are My Business, is the series simply a specialization; or a general practice.
Monsters Are My Business #1
Script: Cullen Bunn
Art: Patrick Piazzalunga
Colors: Marco Brakko
Letters: Jim Campbell
Monsters Are My Business #1 doesn’t waste any time getting down to, well business. Readers will find themselves seated in the car as Griz and Hillary hightail it away from an assignment gone bad. Actually it’s Hillary who wants to reassess the situation from somewhere far from the Ulcerating Sphincter following them. Griz wants to collect some payback for Cuddles by putting his foot – and a few bullets – up its…ulcerating sphincter. When it turns out the attack koala wasn’t killed by the creature, Griz even gets some help finishing the job. Unfortunately their informant gets the business end of Griz’ axe,but as they say that’s all in a day’s work. But don’t let the fact that business is booming for Tanner Grisholm make you believe someone is doing something right. Wrong, it’s more like the secret of some satanic success.
After viewing the deadly a-hole bought to life by Patrick Piazzalunga and Marco Brakko you’ll understand why the team rides back to the office in silence. This gives letterer Jim Campbell time to detail the beast hunter’s account of the company’s horrible beginnings. According to Grisholm it was all courtesy of our country’s most influential hoping to force portions of the Eastern seashore into early retirement. Brakko’s decomposing pedestrians caught in the unending acid storm adds a human element to the unethical actions of Monsters Are My Business’ barbarians at the gate.
Meanwhile, despite his over the top nature Griz is honorable enough to watch out for anyone stuck making a living in the Boglands. A place where monsters come in many forms, from creatures the floods unleashed to the human error that caused them. Even the government is in on it with one of Tanner’s old friends named Jenkins showing up with a job that pays in actual money. Enough to set ole Griz straight even if the gig might be a setup, again. That’s Hillary’s vote, though her majority stake in Tanner’s soul may be leveraging her opinion a bit.
In Monsters Are My Business #1 artists Piazzalunga and Brakko capture the crappy, out of control world that it feels like we’re heading towards these days. Bunn‘s script employs Tanner Grisholm as an everyday, ornery hero recognizing another task as required. A vet whose already been through enough attempting to protect the last patch of land the monsters haven’t taken. Whether this is an actual occurrence or only a comic really depends on which dotted line you sign your name.
Score: 8.7
Monsters Are My Business #1 from Dark Horse Comics 3.99
Overall
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Story/Plot - 8.7/10
8.7/10
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Art/Style - 8.7/10
8.7/10
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Overall Entertainment/Value - 8.6/10
8.6/10
Summary
From the co-creator of The Sixth Gun and Harrow County comes a new action horror comedy! Meet Tanner “Griz” Grisholm. Along with a shrewd necromancer who wants him dead and a chainsaw-wielding koala bear named Cuddles, as he wages a bloody war against nightmares from beyond time and space. It’s thankless work, but someone has to do it. And when a group of government contractors go missing in the nightmare landscape of the Flooded Zone, Griz stumbles into a mystery he may not be able to carve his way out of. His old biker pals, the Howling Gargoyles, are up to no good, and the memories might be too much for Griz to handle.
