Final Boss #2 // Review
World War II. Allied forces investigate a small island somewhere in the Pacific. They have to. They’re stuck. There’s a cave. On first glance, it looks like humans had been using it for shelter. They find a massive temple inside of it. There’s power in that temple. Decades later that island becomes home to a professional fighting competition in Final Boss #2. Writer/artist Tyler Kirkham continues his slightly amusing inadvertent spoof on fight-based action fiction with fellow artist David Miller and colorsit Igansyah Noor. Though it’s likely that Kitkham is trying to take the concept seriously, the second issue of the series fails as both comedy spoof and serious action fantasy.
Back in the present, Brazen’s chest could still be used as a night light. It’s radiating power. He just killed a guy that he was prizefighting against. He’s going to get the cash, but not without a fight. Kills again in kind of a spectacular display that’s going to be a hell of a clean-up job for somebody. Most people are probably horrified and disgusted, but there’s at least one woman who’s actually pretty impressed. She happens to represent interests tied to a certain island in the South Pacific where they’ve turned an ancient temple into an arena.
It’s like the backstory for a one-on-one fighting game or some sort of cheesy fantasy martial arts movie from the early 1980s. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun, though. And Kitrkham’s story IS fun...when it’s not accidentally being really daffy and...well...taking itself way too seriously. The basic dark fantasy of the situation feels like a particularly weak coagulation of different plot elements that have littered the genre for decades. There’s some potential in the basic premise. Kirkham doesn’t reach that potential.
The over-the-top action is...silly. Of particular note here is the brutal death on the 11th page. There are like...1.5 gallons of blood in the human body. The geyser of blood shooting out of the top of this guy’s skull looks like A LOT more than that. There’s blood everywhere. Merry Christmas. It IS pretty, though. A couple of pages before that, someone gets punched and the top of his head gracefully pops-off like he’s a particularly messy Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robot. Physics don’t work like that. Neither does human anatomy, but the art team isn’t trying to do anything that would look even remotely real. Heads are so pressurized in the Final Boss universe. Bump your head against something a little too hard and the top of your skull will go shooting off in a geyser of blood. People must getting headaches all the time. It’s all over-the-top exaggeration. Noor does a good job with all of that blood, but it all looks pretty silly and pretty grisly at the same time. Kind of difficult to get an idea of exactly what it is that they’re going for here.
Final Boss would be a lot of fun as the straightahead spoof that it seems to want to turn into. Kirkham clearly IS trying to make it into some. kind of ridiculously exaggerated badassed action serial, though. To his credit, he IS allowing the characters to develop some kind of emotionlaly-rendered personality that could theoretically lead to some interest beyond the gore and aggression, but he’s pretty far from rendering anything that would seem at all engaging beyond the surface level.
