Death Fight Forever #5 // Review
A man who bears a striking resemblance to comic book writer Andrew MacLean stares right through the comics page at the reader. A couple of rows back are Larry, Moe and Curly. Between the two rows right in the middle of the panel are Marla and Bash: a couple of grim-looking action heroes who are ridiculously mesomorphic. They’re on a trip to reclaim their lives and save the universe in Death Fight Forever #5. The series reaches its final issue with writer Andrew MacLean and artist Andrew Papa. It’s a suitably over-the-top conclusion to a ridiculously amped-up action fantasy adventure.
It’s not much longer than a page later when Marla and Bash run over Lord Slyther with a golf cart and beat the hell out of him with the 9 iron he happened to be holding at the time. Of course...this is a big video game-inspired climax to a fantasy adventure story, so a simple murder like that at the beginning of the final issue isn’t going to be enough. There’s going to be a whole lot more to have to deal with when the sky is split open like a sheet revealing...Megalord Slyther. The final boss has arrived.
MacLean’s adventure has been one of extreme silliness. Rather than get bogged down in self-satisfied weirdness with excessive dialogue, MacLean has trusted the artists that he’s been working with to deliver the weird under the sheer power of the visuals, which hit the page like a ton of bricks on steroids. It’s big. It’s goofy. It’s weird. And that’s kind of the whole point of Death Fight Forever.MacLean has set-up a series of weird encounters inspired by weird late 1980s video game logic and a grade school kid’s sense of subtlety and then...given the script to an artist to use as a playground. It’s fun.
The visuals in the book are done on Procreate under the influence of MF DOOM, Cannibal Corpse and a few other things that are lurking around the Spotify “liked” playlist of Papa. There’s a big, powerfully kinetic sense of action that rips across the page...often making a kind of a cool impact and looking appealingly silly in the process. There’s a strong sense of Kirby and Basil Wolverton at the bleeding core of art that Papa identifies as being influence by the surreally amplified work of people like Simon Bisley and San Kieth. It’s visually appealing once you get accustomed to the excess of it all.
Once again: the interviews with the artists at the end of each book lock-in the handmade indie quality of the comic book. I’d mentioned before in prior reviews of the series that it really feels like you’re reading something that a high school senior would have been working on in Study Hall. There’s a real passion and love that seems to be pulsing through every panel. The interviews with the artists at the end of the issue really lock-in that indie feel of something that might have been printed-up at a Kinko’s and crudely stapled together. And yet...there’s a real sense of stylistic achievement that seems impeccably professional as the series is presented on an indie rack next to all the other Image Comics.
