By Dustin Cabeal

Bonehead is one of those comics that I’m merely glad it exists. It has some rough edges for sure, but setting and design of the world is intriguing. The plot is still alluding us; sure we have the basic idea of everything, but the presented end goal is far in the future barring the question of where’s this arc going?

The issue does establish what happened to the Black Death, which isn’t that hard to figure out. You have to remember that the last issue ended with a cop busting in on our mad scientist. Well, they’re brothers, and you can probably figure out the rest from there. We also learn a little about 56 as he’s called, he can only move thanks to his Bonehead helmet and is upgradable. The issue with the plot is that we still don’t know what this damn drone’s importance is to the story, we’re introduced to our first gang on the streets, and we learn that the police and government are corrupt… Too many plot threads and some of them just need to be plucked. There’s just an overall lack of focus on the plot at the moment. It’s suffering from the long-running shonen problem of too many bad guys, not enough time to fight them.

The artwork is brilliant. Its anime/manga influenced for sure, but with this flair of Peter Chung’s style. Frankly, it’s like looking at video game sprites, and that is a very, very good thing. Its what you want the Udon Entertainment team to do sometimes, but with better writing. The coloring though, that’s where it’s at. This is the best coloring in comics right now if you ask me. It looks like animation and colorist Sakti Yuwono preserves Rhoald Marcellius’ linework and details. The designs are futuristic and wear their influences on their sleeves. I’ve yet to be able to place what the cop reminds me of, but I’m sure if I ask a nerd friend he’ll give me an idea (Robert if you’re reading this, you’re the nerd friend). The designs are over the top future, and if we’re all honest, we secretly want to wear this shit. Another reason the artwork stands out is the movement of the characters. At one point 56 jumps a building and while it’s quick and simple, it’s when Pumpkinjuice attempts the same jump that we see the difference in abilities. It’s a simple, predictable scene, but it looks excellent.

I’m sold on Bonehead. It’s not perfect, I’m sure a lot of people will have problems with the lack of plot at the moment, but there is enough cool stuff happening that it feels like enough. Sometimes it’s enough to just be a cool looking comic. There is a story here, and it’s brewing, and I’m fine with that. Hopefully, others are fine with it as well because I just want to see future parkour people in awesome helmets running around a future city showing off their moves. Let me have that dammit!

Score: 3/5

Bonehead #2
Top Cow/Image Comics