Review: Jeff Steinberg Champion of Earth #1

Meet Jeff Steinberg, mediocre guy who has a mediocre life. He works a dead-end and has a girlfriend who doesn’t respect him and sleeps around. But then something outlandish happens (aliens arrive) and now the guy is the most important guy on Earth. By the end of this story, I am sure guy will save the world, gain great confidence, and get the girl. Maybe not the girlfriend who didn’t respect him, but he will totally have some insanely hot woman on his arm to show that he is a winner. So yeah, the premise isn’t fresh at all, but maybe there’s some good comedy here. We meet Jeff, his roommates, neighbors, and his co-workers (including his boss the aforementioned girlfriend). But Jeff is prepping for something big today and super important, at first you are lead to believe it is asking out the girl, but he immediately leaves after a quick hello to her (soon after we find out they are at least sleeping together if not officially dating) so what could it be? Why he is going to finally defecate for the first time in 18 days after chugging a thing of glue on a dare. Yep, the first half of this comic is dedicated to one long set up for a poop joke.

Jeff Steinberg 1During the setting up and delivery of the joke aliens arrive. The aliens take over the TV and are part of the only couple of pages I found funny. One of the aliens goes on a diatribe about how they are here for peaceful matters and to not try to hack them as they are unhackable! Not even Jeff Goldbloom could hack them. Anyways, said aliens use a device to select the person who is exerting their will the most. Which is of course Jeff trying to pass glue.

As all of this is airing across the world, we then get a wonderful sequence of pages where the savior of the human race is seen with his pants down. Of course hilarity ensues as we get butt jokes and small penis references. Never has Adam Sandler’s comedy stylings filled a comic page more. The last two few pages that feature Jeff illustrate that his girlfriend cares little to nothing for him, and also reveal an awesome mech. So yay awesome mech.

The comic ends with 8 pages of President Obama talking to his military staff. Eventually the aliens interrupt and the leader of the aliens talks to the President. The entire sequence is super long and filled with super corny jokes. The jokes here are just cheesy president jokes. Showing how confident he is while also being a little inept. They are far from political at all, and besides references to specific events that happened during his Presidency and a chant of “Yes he can” it could literally be any random president. The whole entire thing is stupid and pointless, which sadly perfectly sums up this comic. Honestly the only funny thing about the last few pages is that about eight years ago it was a gigantically huge deal that comics had Obama in them. Do you remember the hype of him appearing in the back up of Amazing Spider-Man? Now? Eh, just really badly written stuff that will and should receive zero hype.

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Jeff Steinberg Champion of Earth #1
Writers: Joshua Hale Fiakov and Tony Fleecs
Artist: Tony Fleecs
Publisher: Oni Press
Price: $4.99
Format: Print/Digital

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