Thursday, May 11, 2017

Bug! The Adventures of Forager

Bug! The Adventures of Forager (2017-) #1Bug! The Adventures of Forager (2017-) #1 by Lee Allred
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Some time after his apparent death, Forager wakes up in the basement of a house on Earth with a talking teddy bear and a creepy little girl for company. Then things get weird...

Michael Allred has been one of my favorite comic book artists for aeons. When I saw he was teaming with his brother to do Bug! The Adventures of Forager, my curiosity was piqued. I only knew Forager from the New Gods entry in the 1980s version of Who's Who in the DC Universe and the awful "Olsen-bug" version from Countdown.

According to an interview I read before picking this up, Lee and Michael Allred became obsessed with Forager because of a battered copy of New Gods #9 at their guitar teacher's place when they were kids. Since Forager only made three appearances, including his death in Cosmic Odyssey, they pretty much had a clean slate.

The book reads like a love letter to Jack Kirby's DC creations from the first panel. Bug tears out of a cocoon and gets plunged neck deep in strangeness. Without spoiling too much, Bug teams up with another Jack Kirby creation from the 1970s to take on a super villain named General Electric.

The first issue is mostly setup but does a great job of setting the tone. Michael Allred's retro-style art is marvelous, as always, and his brother's writing works toward his strengths, making for one hell of a fun comic. Not only does it make me anxious for the rest of the series, it makes me want to try the rest of the Young Animals line and read all the 1970s Jack Kirby DC comics I can find. Five out of five stars.

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