With a name like that how can you not want to check this one-shot out? Harkonnen: Fucking Fat Flying Bastard, which I will just call Harkonnen from now on because that’s a lot to type, is from creator Łukasz (pronounced Lucas) Kowalczuk who you should remember from my recent review of Vreckless Vrestlers. This one shot contains several short stories starring Harkonnen who I can only assume is some ruthless space overlord. The charm of the one-shots is that they’re dialogue free so the storytelling is all done with the visuals, but with that there isn’t any backstory on Harkonnen.
That’s okay, because we don’t really need it. You get that he’s ruthless and a leader of some kind and really he’s kind of a dick, but because he’s not being a dick to you it’s funny. For instance in the first short, Harkonnen is at the doctors to get a zit popped. The doctor kind of fucks up and this huge puss ball explodes and lands on one of Harkonnen’s body guards. The results are that said bodyguard fires his weapon and blows the head off of the other body guard. Everyone waits for Harkonnen’s reaction which ends up being laughter. With that they all laugh.
It’s a very short one-shot, but I enjoyed the over the top stories and Harkonnen’s ruthlessness. Kowalczuk’s abilities as a storyteller are very impressive as he’s able to communicate so much without the use of dialogue. It was kind of like reading a MAD magazine short, but funnier.
Kowalczuk has a very clean style with this issue; in Vreckless Vrestlers his line work is thicker and bolder and it matches that story quite well. Here the softer line work and contrasts work far better with the subject matter. It’s a better fit for the comedy as well.
The only problem is that it’s out of print! Yeah I was given a review copy, but you’re kind of out of luck unless Kowalczuk decides to take it back to the printers. It might not be a bad idea to combo it up with Vreckless Vrestlers, but either way if you’re interested you should contact Kowalczuk and ask him. He’ll probably be pretty excited you did.
Score: 3/5
Writer/Artist/Creator: Łukasz Kowalczuk Publisher: Core Hate Comics Price: $3.25