Assorted Crisis Events #9 // Review
Chuckie needed the money. So Chuckie shot a tranq dart at Jesus Christ. He also helped build one of the pyramids. He got punched by Abraham Lincoln. He also made friends with a Roman centurion from Trenton, New Jersey. Such is the life of a temp in Assorted Crisis Events #9. Writer Deniz Camp brings a whole new one-shot story to the page with artist Eric Zawadzki and colorist Jordie Bellaire. Things get particularly weird and go pleasantly off the rails in a deeply enjoyable one-shot story that ends way too quickly. There’s so much potential in the one-shot concept that it could easily turn into its own series.
Chucky’s a temp in a world where temps time travel to different eras and perform odd jobs that don’t require experience or an education. It’s not much, but it DOES get him out of the house and allow him to tour through different eras doing menial work and...honestly quite dangerous work that could get him killed, but you get that with any job, right? The hours aren’t great...and the employer DOES find ways of screwing you over on your paycheck, but it IS work. So he can’t complain.
If time travel existed, you know that the corporations would own it. And the only way it would be profitable would be to monetize it. And since the people with the most money are also the least creative, they’re going to find the most appallingly stupid ways of using the tech. That’s the joke that Camp is working with in one of the darker comedic stories to come out of a comic book shop in the past year or so. Camp burns through SO many little throwaway ideas. Individual moments in the issue could launch whole series. It’s impressive stuff.
Zawadski does some clever things with the layout of the book. Camp throws a lot of challenges at him as the restless tableau of Chuckie’s life drones through the pages in the midst of some pretty bleak comedy. A lesser artist might have tried to amp-up the comedy a bit, but Zawadski plays it straight from beginning to end and the issue flows beautifully as a result. The dizzying swirly of events across time cascade through the pagess with some particularly appealing coloring by Bellaire. She does som cool stuff with the colors...often choosing a single dominant color for a setting and building all of the rest of the color out of it.
At some point it just kind of feels like Camp is showing-off. As witnessed from the winding course of the series, Camp has a profoundly fertile imagination. Any ONE of the issues in the series could launch it’s own series. A writer like Geoff Johns would build an entire universe of comics around the premise for this one issue. Camp’s a bit too restless for that. He’s going to keep moving. There are too many stories to tell. With any luck, he’s going to keep going with it for at least a few more years.
