By Daniel Vlasaty
I am going to be completely honest and say that I have no idea why I chose to review this book. Maybe it was because of the "sexy" nun on the cover. I don't know. Nuns have never really been a fetish of mine. And I think that has to do with the fact that I used to go to a Catholic school and the only nun we had there was like five hundred years old and probably the meanest person I have ever met in my life. She's actually the reason I was kicked out of that school some years later; although that is a story for another time. What I'm saying is Misbegotten Runaway Nun is a book that uses religion and religious undertones throughout, and I have a pretty big problem with religion as a whole. Especially when being hit over the head repeatedly with it. (As in this book...and also the Catholic religion). And in general, this is a book that I would have no fucking interest in.
People always say to go with your gut. In most things go with that feeling you know to be true that is burning you from the inside out. And I fucking know that, but I'm a goddamn asshole, and I never listen to myself. Or my gut. In this case, my gut was telling me not to read this book. Just flat-out NO. But what did I do? I went and read the motherfucker anyway.
Basically, this is just not good. The story is kind of all over the place and there doesn’t really seem to be any central focus. It's about a world that's at war. Jesuits vs. Pagans, I guess. It wasn’t really clear. We follow around a Cardinal, he's the leader of the Jesuit Fleet (again, I guess). And for whatever reason they have taken to the ideology that firearms need to be banned from all wars, even though their enemies don’t follow that same thought. And then there is a secret island where scientists are cloning people and building replikas. And, honestly, I don’t fucking know. It's a mess. There's some Hilter clones and a Marilyn Monroe clone and Gandhi clones and Freud clones and blah blah blah. There's a Jesus clone, too, and the Marilyn Monroe clone has come to warn the Jesuits that he will be killed and nailed to a cross. UGH!
There's a really awkward sex scene where the Marilyn Monroe clone pays for a ride off the island by fucking a pilot, and the dialogue in this scene is cringe-worthy. I am not familiar with Caesar Voghan's writing, but in Misbegotten Runaway Nun it is clumsy and just plain bad. The tone of voice in the narration doesn’t fit that of the rest of the book, and just gives it a weird feel. Here's an example of some of the clumsy writing: "For some replikas, the trip to freedom ends up way too soon into a hasty burial at sea." This is taken directly from one of the many narration boxes. And I just don’t even know how to comment on it.
In all honesty, I don’t ever expect much from Action Lab or Danger Zone, but Misbegotten Runaway Nun might be one of the worst comic books I've read this year.
Justin Case does the art here and while it's not terrible, it's not really all that good either. It's kind of generic and a little too heavy on the shadows. The best part of the art is the Marilyn Monroe clone. It's almost like she is drawn in a different style. Like she is colored differently, too. While other characters are draped in heavy shadows, there is light on her. The backgrounds and the sets are decently rendered and colored, but it's not enough to save the art for me.
All in all, Misbegotten Runaway Nun is a hard pass for me. I won't be reading anymore and I can't imagine there's much of a reason for anyone else to either. I was recently discussing something with a friend of mine and feel it is fitting to add to the end of this review. There are so many good books out there in the world (we were talking about novels - but the same thought can be applied to comics as well) that there is no reason to waste time reading bad things. And again, the idea of "bad things" is entirely subjective. Maybe this book worked for you, or for some other people, I don’t know. I can't see it, but if it did, that's awesome. Continue enjoying this book then. I just won't be there with you to take the ride.
Score: 1/5
Misbegotten: Runaway Nun #1
Danger Zone