REVIEW: Doomsday +1 #12

Story: Joe Gill
Art: Byrne Robotics
Colors: Wendy Fiore
Review: Madman

As a fan of the old Charlton Comics I was super stoked to find and rescue this book from dirt mall obscurity. I had never seen this particular title before, but the cover depicting a fur-clad barbarian getting bear hugged by an armored gorilla/beast/guy/thing and a leatherclad Black Widow look-alike was worth the dollar itself.

Of course the story is absolutely generic and saturated with much, “Meh”.

I don’t dig reading any character speaking broken English like they’re simple, and the ancient Goth barbarian Kuno’s dialogue is just that. Obviously Mr. Gill is trying to throw in a speech pattern to differentiate Kuno from the locals, but it comes off like he has a disability.

There are a few more things about Kuno mentioned in this book that just don’t make a bit of sense. For instance, he was apparently defrosted when radiation melted a glacier in Greenland.

Did the Goths even live in Greenland?
Why in the hell does Kuno even speak English at all being a Goth from Greenland who was frozen in ice for hundreds of years? And why does he smoke cigars?

How much thought did Mr. Gill put into this story? 

In the recent past, nuclear firestorms decimated the Earth and, besides thawing out Kuno, mutated or killed the planet’s population.
Kuno is running around playing Rick Grimes with other survivors including; Ikei, a blue-haired Japanese woman, Jill, the Black Widow clone, and their fearless leader, Boyd.

The story starts with the motley quartet battling, “muties”. Boyd blasts a veritable army with what looks to be a Glock 9mm as they escape into their super high-tech plane/spaceship thing and zoom off. The team decides they need a vacation and head to the Florida Keys.

A few things here…the high-tech plane/spaceship thing has tires…rubber tires. My second problem here is the fact that in the middle of this radioactive holocaust these jerks decide they need to hit the beach and go shelling in Flordia. Third, why not a ray gun or something? Why, oh why, do you go with a 9mm? Fourthly...Boyd straight up looks like Donald Trump sprinkled with a smidge of Flash Gordon.

In fact, after the vacation, our super team ends up traveling to an alternate Earth. Every single dude there looks like Donald Trump and the evil Donald Trump president of the alternate Earth has enslaved primitive ape-people.

Around here is where I totally lost interest and just started reading all the nifty vintage ads for companies that don’t exist anymore…
I mean, if you know a place where I can find 204 revolutionary war soldiers for only $2.50, so I don’t have to cut out this order form that’d be great. Or, more importantly, where I could find a pair of these hammer fists that buckle onto ones wrists giving one, “sledge hammer striking power and strength”.
That’d just be fantastic.

It doesn’t matter that, more often then not, reading Charlton comics will leave a lot to be desired. It’s like eating a couple pounds of government cheese…sometimes it’s just not worth two weeks of constipation no matter how much you save on Charmin. However, ten outta ten times, it’s always worth adding the books to your collection just for the covers.

Free hypno-coin with 25 lessons in hypnotism…that’ll cost ya a buck fiddy.