Final Boss #10 // Review
“Yum, Yum!” says the lizard that’s on top of Tommy. Then it chomps. You can see that it chomps because there’s the word “CHOMP” written at the end of the lizard’s tongue. In the next panel there are a couple more chomps. Tommy’s going to be okay, though. He IS after-all the hero of Final Boss #10. Writer/artist Tyler Kirkham continues a silly action series inspired by old one-on-one fighting video games. Fellow artist David Miller aids Kirkham in the art. Color comes to the page courtest of Ifansyah Noor. Things don’t get any deeper. Some of the action is laughably grafted to the page. It’s still kind of fun, though.
The lizard that Tommy is fighting is called Dragod. Dragod’s evil because he’s talking about Tommy’s family and trying to hurt Tommy. Tommy’s the good guy, though, so Tommy’s going to win. And when he does, he’s going to get even more powerful, but he’s still going to be dripping with blood because that looks cool and Tommy always looks cool. There are going to be bigger problems once Tommy’s finished with Dragod, though. The series isn’t over and there’s more danger ahead for the hero.
The script to this thing is SO bad. Granted: one doesn’t go to a series like Final Boss for anything too terribly intellectual, but there has to be SOMETHING to bind the story to the page in a way that feels appealing and Kirkham has consistently failed at the in the course of every issue leading-into this one. So at least Kitkham’s being consistent. There are ways to stage a simple fight to the death that work on a mindless surface level AND a deeper thematic level, but Kirkham doesn’t seem at all interested in going beyond the superficial.
There would also be ways of staging the action on the page in a way that. could make even the most superficial script feel appealing. Kirkham and company don’t really manage this either. The action hits the page in a way that feels largely predictable. Though the action hits the page with considerable force, it’s not doing so in a way that really resonates in the mind. The best action art can be felt even when the reader walks away from the page. Kitkham doesnn’t manage this...often going for lazy, uninspired framing and layout that never really amount to much of an impression.
It would be really cool to see Final Boss have some kind of totally wild and unpredictable ending that would completely subvert the tedium of everything that came before it. It’s been nearly a year now with this series. There’s always that hope that Kitkham could turn it in a direction that would turn it into something truly interesting and engaging, but as it is, he’s got SO much momentum into the bleariness of trope-bound repetition that it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be able to manage much of interest by the inevitable end of the series.
