Punk Rock Jesus #4

Gwen has been banned from the J2 compound and gone public in a big way, telling TV shows a lot of the dirty goings-on that the dastardly Rick Slate has engineered. The New American Christians invade the compound, with Gwen along for the ride so she can help rescue Chris. Unfortunately, Slate uses this as an excuse to murder Gwen, and when Thomas attacks Slate, he has the security chief fired. And the result on Chris is that he starts looking for how he can rebel — vast amounts of exercise, reading books on politics, religion, and science that Slate doesn’t approve of, listening to as much punk rock as he can. And when Chris volunteers to host the Grammys, what they get instead of a docile, telegenic, Jesus clone is a furious, foul-mouthed, mohawked, politically aware Jesus clone who’s looking to raise a punk rock army to blow America apart.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This just keeps getting better and better. Offensive? Bless its black little heart, you bet it is. Although, ya gotta say, a cloned, mohawked Jesus who bellows “Go f**k yourself! Jesus hates you!” is probably a lot less offensive when you consider all the mountains of awfulness he’s been put through so far. And Sean Murphy is doing such a great job with this story, I think I’ve got faith that it’s going to get better in the last two issues…

Halloween Eve

This Kickstarter-funded comic comes to us from writer Brandon Montclare and artist Amy Reeder. It focuses on Eve, a Halloween-hating wage slave who has the misfortune of working in a Halloween store. She’s rude to her coworkers, barely civil to customers, and is very angry that she’ll be required to dress in a costume on Halloween night. But when Eve has to stay late cleaning the store before Halloween, she soon finds the costumes around her coming to life and is thrown into a world full of monsters and ghosts. Will she be able to get into the Halloween spirit before time runs out?

Verdict: I hate to say it, but thumbs down. The art is entirely gorgeous, just like you’d expect from something Amy Reeder is working on. But I couldn’t get into the story at all, and I especially disliked the ending, which was far too abrupt and tidy, and Eve’s personality transfer, from angry and prickly to sweet and sentimental, doesn’t really make sense.