”Just cause we are eating garbage doesn’t mean we have to eat alone!”
Creative Staff:
Writers: Ulises Fariñas and Erick Freitas
Artist: Ulises Fariñas
Colors: Melody Often
Cover Artists: Ulises Fariñas and Melody Often
What They Say:
Pokemon meets Power Rangers in this kaiju-packed mature parody that follows a monster trainer whose dreams of fortune and glory collide with his own hubris and the downfall of the entire planet in a story about betrayal and redemption in a world of bizarre, cute, and deadly monsters.
Content: (warning, spoilers)
Imagine attending an anime convention. Or in a more accessible example: imagine staring at a wall of Funko Pops at your local Target. Maybe you’re familiar with a handful of series, are well-versed in one, and have absolutely no clue on the rest of the figures. And that’s the point. Funko Pops suck in that they’re one giant nerd flex on the population. There isn’t anything elegant or even remotely fascinating about them outside of the fact that there are just so many of them, and the history behind each one is different from the next. On the one hand you have Game of Thrones characters, while the next, you might have Adventure Time or Pokemon or Rick and Morty. It’s a celebration of pop culture in the most narrow-minded way possible in that it interprets simply showing [insert pop culture icon here] as a means of appreciation without any care for the execution itself.
This is what reading Gamma was like.
Written by Ulises Fariñas and Erick Freitas, Gamma is like an explosion of pop culture and indie comics crammed into a single issue. Which sounds pretty cool in all honesty, except I had absolutely no clue as to what was going on from page to page. Panels feel cramped and difficult to read (I had to zoom in significantly than when reading your standard comic issue) in a way that’s reminiscent of indie comics. Paneling and word bubbles are so thoroughly squished together so as to make sure you get as much bang for your buck as possible, and yet the “story” itself is so incomprehensible that by the time you finish the issue, you wish you were treated to something a bit fluffier and easier to digest.
From what I could understand, we enter the mind of a one Dusty Ketzchemal (get the Pokemon reference?) as he flashbacks to events of his past that involve elements of science fiction, kaiju movies, super sentai, and probably a couple other things I’m not nerdy enough to catch. Events are told in excruciating detail and yet none at all in that we’re given absolutely no context for the scenes themselves. Characters come and go as they please, saying something you’re pretty sure is important before maybe dying or getting recruited or abandoned… it’s all pretty unclear and it this point I’d rather just walk away before I’m further pop culture shamed.
It’s like walking into a comic book shop, getting intimidated by the neckbeards that gatekeep their precious fictional characters, and then immediately walking back out. You just end up confused, put in a bad mood for not getting anything, then immediately dropping it.
In Summary:
Gamma is like staring at a wall of Funko Pops where you know maybe one or two of the shows, but are otherwise stupendously overwhelmed. There’s little rhyme or reason to what’s going on as its narrative bounces back and forth between indeterminate time periods under the assumption you know exactly what’s going on. In a lot of ways, it’s like tuning into an anime in the middle of the series: there’s a lot of spectacle, pretentious one-liners, and the power of friendship, and yet you ultimately feel like you’re missing out on something. In some respects, I’m sure that’s definitely the intent behind Fariñas and Freitas’ madness, but it just didn’t click with me.
Grade: D
Age Rating: T+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 26, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
