Sometimes, you just need to laugh at yourself. Whether it’s the memory of a poorly-chosen haircut, a questionably advisable tryst with a Romanian hairdresser of advanced years or a shady arms deal gone sour, often the best medicine is to look back on your past little faux-pas and foibles, and enjoy an embarrassed little titter. The same is true (in fact to a larger extent) of pop culture; I mean, how uncomfortably fun is it to look back and cringe at terribly sexist coffee ads from years gone by, or horribly un-PC movies? Well, that’s exactly what It Came! is: Dan Boultwood’s hilarious, face-palmingly fantastic look back on a younger Britain; one obsessed with both the outer limits and the swarthy inner strength of the quick-witted, yet backwardly enlightened English gentleman.
Why, you can almost smell the rich pipe tobacco and even richer misogynistic condescension as they mingle together in the thick atmosphere of this insanely fun little drive-in love letter to a time where the only things simpler than the special effects at the pictures were the minds that ran the show.
Despite being a laughably open chauvinist, it’s hard not to find It Came!’s main protagonist and resident “Scientist of Space and Such,” Dr. Boy Brett, infectiously endearing. His own terms of endearment toward his increasingly unimpressed ladyfriend companion, Ms. Doris Night, include such greats as Old Minge, Old Flange and of course everyone’s favorite, Old Cock, and they come in rapid-fire succession, each more ludicrous than the last. However, while this is most decidedly the thinly-evolved ape’s show, there are plenty of other reasons to experience It Came!, and I don’t just mean the sexually suggestive title!
This issue sees lovable yet “terrifying” giant alien robot GRURK pick apart the small platoon of similarly outmoded British soldiers who have descended to explore the strange goings-on in the idyllic English village setting. Everything from the way GRURK cartoonishly sneaks behind a house to pounce on his unsuspecting victims, to the bumbling oafery of the army, is an absolute romp, not to mention incredibly unique to anything currently on the shelves. This is science fiction made innocent again, and Boultwood is clearly having a ball poking fun at his pop-cultural roots.
His art, too, continues to be a hoot: clean and unspoiled by details (a cue echoed by Dr. Brett), It Came! is colorful while being monochromatic; uncomplicated but far from simple, and at the same time, boasting as much command of comedic timing in the art and lettering as there is in the writing. His facial expressions are absolutely priceless, which is important, I suppose, in a book that could very well be about [SPOILER] the interstellar robbery of British stiffupperlipness.
The little “house ads” that he splices through both issues so far are great and build the overall setting of this book in little recreations of overly-patriarchal advertising. When combined with candid images of the story’s stars as they relax “on set,” as well as an “Anatomy of a GRURK” at the end of the book (look out especially for Point #11), It Came! continues to be as light, flakey and delicious in its center as it is at the crust of its periphery.
Have you been waiting for a solid jab at archaic political incorrectness wrapped in a quirky-ass science fiction-meets-small English town setting? Yeah, well...It Came!
Score: 5/5
Writer/Artist/Creator: Dan Boultwood Esq. Publisher: Titan Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: 9/11/13