Review: Kneel Before Doomface #1

You'll laugh, you'll kneel, you'll laugh again.

Writer	Aaron Sparrow
Illustrator	Renzo Rodriguez
Colorist	Oscar Carreno
Content Rating	Teen
Publisher	Krowd Control

Spoilers Ahead

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I've always been a fan of humor; whether it's movies, games, comics, or TV shows, humor was a big part of my upbringing. Seinfeld was a nightly ritual for my family; the antics of Frasier and his brother Niles never failed to elicit a chuckle; Calvin & Hobbes; The Tick; Tommy Boy; The Chapelle Show; it's a long list filled with laughs and memories. Yet, for all the grins, humor can be one of the most human genres of entertainment to engage with. Humor aims a mirror squarely at the audience and you often find a bit (or a lot) of yourself in the characters, warts and all. The best humor can make you think and it can make you feel as much as guffaw.

With Kneel Before Doomface #1, I found myself laughing quite a lot, and by the end I was genuinely anxious to find out what was next for the cast. Like the best humor should, Doomface regularly split a smile across my face, but it also occasionally made me think a little deeper about the world the story was taking place in, and even reflect a bit about the real one we all reside in. The basic setup is that Doomface is an otherworldly megalomaniac on the verge of taking over humanity when two heroes stop and capture him. He remains trapped for decades until an unwitting group of faux ghost hunters accidentally break him free. Meanwhile, up-and-comers Notorious K.I.D. (referred to as Spam throughout the story) and his partner, an inflatable iguana named Iggy, strive to impress a hero they idolize, which naturally doesn't go how they expect it to.

Writer Aaron Sparrow of Darkwing Duck and Thinking Critical fame is the writer and creator of Doomface. Sparrow's ability to blend humor and drama is well known, but for me this served as my introduction to the writer, as I must admit I was never a Darkwing reader (although in my defense, I wanted to read his run after I found out about it and the trades were impossible to find!). I was genuinely laughing out loud at multiple moments throughout the story, especially when a certain character was killed in a highly creative way involving a "resurrected last meal." It was simultaneously gross and side-splitting. And I won't spoil any of it, but King Manaconda has some of the funniest dialogue I've read in a comic in years.

Doomface himself is clearly the center of the book (his name is in the title, so I would hope so), and he chews up every scene he's in. So far we don't have an origin or a motive for Doomface and his evil machinations, but for now I don't care; his bombastic way of speaking, ludicrous proclamations, and evil-yet-funny behavior had me, if not rooting for him exactly, at least wanting to see more. The reason I say not rooting is because of the heroes who pop up. Colonel Silverstreak appears at the beginning and in a backup story, but the bulk of the issue that isn't focused on Doomface is on Iggy and Spam.

I gotta say... I don't like Spam as a moniker. Notorious K.I.D. can be a mouthful, admittedly, but why not just call him Kid? Anyway, nitpick aside, Iggy and Spam have good chemistry and come across well in the role of bright eyed innocents still learning about the dark realities of life. Including, it seems, the superheroes of this world. The two are trying to win over Captain Smash, a big time hero who's also a major jerk and a narcissist. Their plight is primarily played for laughs, but the interaction with Smash also serves as a valuable lesson to Iggy and Spam about the potential pitfalls of "meeting your heroes," as the idiom goes. His lack of heroism makes the duo reflect on why it's important for people like them to pick up the slack, and in turn made me care about them even more by the time the issue wrapped.

I feel (at least for someone like me who knows about his history) that it's impossible to go into this comic without thinking about Sparrow and his journey through the comic book industry. While he's not in quite the choppy waters of an Ethan Van Sciver, for instance, Sparrow has had his run-ins with activists both online and in the industry who have done what they can to keep him out of mainstream comics. The whisper networks and, frankly, scummy people that have been in and continue to be in the industry have resulted in talent like Sparrow and others not working on series that they would be perfect for, and are instead working on their own indie books and smaller projects.

And hey, if that means I get a book like Doomface, I'll take that over nothing. But it did color my appreciation for some of Sparrow's jokes throughout the issue. His portrayal of Captain Smash, for instance, felt like a meta commentary on the comic book industry in some ways, while also simultaneously serving as a means for Sparrow to get some digs in at everything from furries to pretentious comic book creators. As much as most of the humor really worked for me, by the end of the story I did find myself a little conflicted as I wasn't totally sure of the percentage Sparrow is going for between humor and sincerity. Am I supposed to root for Iggy and Spam, or Doomface (and maybe Smash because dammit, I hate furries, too)? Or both?

I guess we'll find out as the series progresses, but with classic comics like Ben Edlund's The Tick, I felt like I knew right away where my sympathies should lie and what the general vibe was going to be, whereas here I'm not so sure. I don't know that I'd call this a criticism, but perhaps a concern is more accurate. Regardless, once the proverbial credits rolled, I was nonetheless invested. And that's thanks in equal measure to artist Renzo Rodriguez's art. A solid mix of the legendary Mike Wieringo and Andrea Di Vito, Rodriguez's illustrations are something else to behold.

First off, all of the character designs are great. Doomface, K.I.D., Iggy, Silverstreak; everyone is distinct and memorable. Including Lexi, who's refreshingly, unapologetically hot. And lest some angry comic book editor or lascivious museum curator starts crying about that online, not only is it okay to have hot women in comics, not only is it okay to stare at said hot women (via some... generous worms-eye shots) as a heterosexual male, it's also possible for those hot women to be genuine characters, genuinely interesting, and not just pieces of meat. She also appears to be a woman of color, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, keyboard puritans.

Of course, all the pretty figure drawings in the world can't tell a coherent comic book story, but as luck would have it, Rodriguez is good at everything. Characters emote; the action is kinetic and easy to follow; panel compositions are clear and creative. And in perhaps the best compliment I can pay Rodriguez, like Wieringo, he is a master of drawing action, not violence. Although that resurrected meal scene... well, maybe Rodriguez actually does both, now that I think about it!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention colorist Oscar Carreno. As talented colorists do, Carreno doesn't overpower Rodriguez's lines with overly rendered color art. Instead, his beautiful selection of hues is more subtly and complimentarily incorporated, evoking the spirt of legends like Paul Mounts and Dave Stewart, here and there, while also being firmly Carreno's own style. The sunset at the end with Iggy and Spam was a personal favorite of mine. As much as I love the burgeoning parallel comic book industry that exists right now, I do feel like some books look less than professional; Doomface looks as good as, if not better than, most of Marvel and DC's output.

Which I consider to be a testament to Sparrow being a legit pro. He's walked this walk and worked on multimillion dollar IPs in his time. He knows how a book should be presented, he knows how to tell a story, and he knows how to make customers happy. My only real negative here is a selfish one: I wish this was a monthly, not a Kickstarter project that will come out when it comes out. So, I implore all of you reading this to go and buy Doomface. It's a wonderful debut that won't disappoint, and the more people who buy it, maybe the more often Sparrow and friends can make it. While I do caution that Sparrow and company nail down the balance of humor and seriousness to more firmly set reader expectations, I truly hope that we'll keep getting more Doomface for years to come.

Verdict: Recommended

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Bits & Bytes was provided a copy of this comic for review by a third party, though that does not affect our evaluation.