Battling Boy

Battling Boy by Paul Pope
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Haggard West, hero of Arcopolis is dead. Fortunately, Battling Boy has arrived to prove himself to his parents and take up Haggard West's fight against the monsters plaguing Arcopolos. But what of Haggard West's daughter, Aurora?

I've got a couple of old issues of Paul Pope's THB and I liked his Adam Strange feature in Wednesday Comics so when I found this on the cheap at V-Stock, I snapped it up. It was easily worth my four bucks.

Paul Pope's art is what originally drew me to this. It's part prime era Jack Kirby, part Moebius. It's minimalist yet complex, stylized, and fucking awesome. He's as at home drawing vast cityscapes and other-worldly homes of gods. The monsters get as much attention to detail as the mundane. In short, it's great.

The story is good, too. It's a coming of age tale about the son of a god and the daughter of a dead hero. Arcopolis is a city under siege by monsters and Battling Boy shows up to stem the tide. Things quickly go pear-shaped.

There is some good use of parallelism as Battling Boy and Aurora West try to fill the shoes of their parents. Aurora uses the science of her father while Battling Boy draws power from his father's cape and the twelve magic t-shirts he's been given, as well as being the son of a Thor analogue.

Battling Boy just scratches the surface of the world Paul Pope has forged. I guess I'm tracking down the rest of the books in this series. Five out of five stars.



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