By Dustin Cabeal
Have you ever read a comic that is good, but still just not quite for you? That’s where I am with Lizard Men. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s well-written, and the creators understand the medium and produce a professional work. It just didn’t vibe with me.
The general idea is that we met a rocker that’s reformed his life and moved away from the music and the drugs to become the Prime Minister of Great Britain. For the people, they’re excited and shitting their pants with joy. It’s a bit reflective of the state of affairs in American in which some people believed a non-politician would be a good fucking idea. I’ll save you my political rant, but hey, I may have figured out why this book wasn’t vibing with me… it’s hitting too close to home, and I have enough reality to deal with that I didn’t find this book to be escapism.
Our young upstart Prime Minister is getting his bearings at Downing Street after we get through all the typical crowd and media reactions. Dylan heads to his office, which he’s excited about, to refocus his energy when two men in white suits introduce themselves as his new masters. They represent an entity that’s been ruling the land for a very long time and so on and so forth.
Again, the writing isn’t bad. It’s a bit predictable at times, but that’s me saying that. I’ve read and consumed a lot of comics, and so if this was your first comic you read, you wouldn’t be as muffed by the story as I was. The characters are flat, that’s partially because of the structure of the story. There’s a lot of focus on what people think and are saying about Dylan rather than the reader getting to know him and his supporting cast of characters.
The art has its ups and downs. There’s a very cool supernatural scene that’s left for us to figure out at a later date, but it looks great. Then one of the White Suit guys eat an ice cream cone, and it’s incredibly awkward to look at. The proportions are off; the angle is weird making his hand look strange, and I doubt that was the intent of that image. I’m fairly certain we were supposed to just look at it and go, “he’s the guy always eating.” Instead, there was this strangely distracting image of ice cream. Some of the character designs lacked in detail and designs, but for the most part, the rest of the comic is illustrated and colored well.
For me, there were just a lot of little things about Lizard Men that stood out at the wrong times. If I was more invested in the material, I doubt I would have caught or mentioned any of them, but because I wasn’t they there were for me to discover. I don’t have an answer for what would have hooked me more for this story. At its core it’s They Live, but with a Rockstar Prime Minister. That sounds fun and adventurous, but for whatever reason, the execution didn’t make hook me. You can support it on Kickstarter and find out for yourself. Again, I read a lot of comics and follow politics a bit too much to enjoy a comic that dabbles in them, but even still, I can see that this is a well-made comic.
Score: 3/5
Lizard Men #1
Comichaus