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This holy alliance between comic mastermind Rick Remender, actor and comedian Andy Samberg, and musician, producer and creative mind Joe Trohman could have gone exactly two ways. Either a total failure or a total gem.
Spoiler alert: The latter is the case.
Because what this three-writer team served up with The Holy Roller #1 really blew me away. Big big cinema!
Not just in the figurative sense, but true cinema on paper. Here you can clearly see Andy Samberg's influence and Remender's experience with motion pictures. With Roland Boschi, they also have exactly the right artist in the team who can implement all this brilliantly.
This oversized first issue tells us the story of a superhero in the making.
A superhero for our time.
That's what made the most lasting impression on me about this comic. It's damn topical. Painfully relevant.
We got Levi Cohen, a jewish boy growing up in Cleveland, spending his days like most kids in the bowling alley, although he'd rather spend his talent on the arcade than follow in the footsteps of his father, the talented amateur bowler David Cohen. His relationship with his father is not the best and continues throughout his life.
Since his relationship with the town and its narrow-minded inhabitants is not the best either, he seizes the first opportunity he gets and makes his escape, joins Greenpeace and spends the next 20 years on a boat (yes, he's on a boat!), doing...yeah...whatever.
Until one day he receives the news that his father doesn't have long to live. And so he returns. To a city, an America, that he no longer recognizes. Because it is full of neo-Nazis.
Like I said, painfully relevant.
But how else his return takes place, when the superhero is born and what else makes Levi so special, I'll leave that up to you to find out, because you have to read this comic. Or watch, I don't know what's the appropriate word for this for this entertainment package that delivers across the board. A very strong mix of charming comedy, touching drama, political and social criticism and, exactly, superhero comic.
More, please!
(You can subscribe to "The Holy Roller" series at Walt's Comic Shop through Manage Comics. Simply click HERE).
Holy Roller #1 Cover B Jh Williams III Variant
€5,90
SERIES PREMIERE Everyone was sitting around wondering when comedy legend ANDY SAMBERG (SNL, Palm Springs) would join super-star writer RICK REMENDER (DEADLY CLASS, LOW) and Fall Out Boy's multi-talented JOE TROHMAN to write a comic about a vigilante hero who… read more
