The Virgin Read: That Part Where Ace Says "I Broke It" Was Pretty Wicked

Each week, Nina Stone picks out one random comic book based off her own made up criteria, reads it, and then writes about that experience. While she's been doing these columns for awhile, she's only successfully managed to remember and keep up with one series. This week, she picked Beasts of Burden # 1.

Beasts of Burden # 1
Written by Evan Dorkin
Art by Jill Thompson
Published by Dark Horse Comics

As you may be aware of, Monday nights are when this little column called the Virgin Read is generally published. And to be honest, Monday nights are, more often than not, when they are written. I've gotten better--I usually have the comic read before Monday, but sometimes? Sometimes it all happens in a that furious rush between work and dinner. Quickly reading, trying to crystalize my experience into words, wondering how to spell "crystalize", and so on.

After a long and lovely summer hiatus, my teaching schedule began again today. It was a great day, but I'm all kinds of wacky-tired, and on my way home thought to myself, "Oh Shit. I have to read my comic and review it tonight. And somehow, I have to do that before House starts, because I'll be damned if I'm missing the crazy season premiere."

Is that enough personal stuff? Do you like the wizard that I keep behind the curtain? 

Okay, Beasts of Burden. First things first: how lovely that in my tiredness I didn't find myself stuck choking down some nonsense about post-apocalyptic-zombie-superheroes. (I mean no offense if that's your thing, it's just not mine. I probably should, at some point, read one of those. I almost did. There was a zombie super-hero comic where Iron Man was surfing on an eagle, and that caught my eye. But then I looked inside and wanted to go to bed for the rest of the day. I assume I'll be given more chances? There will be more of those, yes?) This though, this Beasts of Burden comic book? I didn't have to worry about any of that. I had 20-something delightful pages of doggies and kitty cats! On principle alone, this comic is ALL right with me. In practice, I found even more reasons to like it. 

See, I can deal with frogs falling from the sky and forming into one giant demon frog if from the get-go we're dealing with talking dogs. I didn't know that was a rule that I had in my brain, but....it is, I guess. If you want frogs falling from the sky/giant evil frog, then this particular reader needs you to open with talking dogs. Know what I'm saying? Because if you do, explain it to me--I still can't fully understand why that was my initial reaction to the frogs, but it was. I saw the frogs and said "you've earned it, comic book."

I love each and every characterization of each and every animal, be it dog, cat or frog. There's a perfect mix of the human and the animal drawn in their facial expressions and body language. I'm a sucker for this stuff--the way these animals look on the page matches up exactly with how my head believes they would act. The dialog, their appearance--it's basically, and I don't mean this lightly, perfect. All of them make sense. In all of my acting experience and for all the times that a girl wants to have more lines, my favorite role was as the elephant, Big Mary, in the play of the same name by Mark Medoff. I had zero lines. I was on stage the whole time, had to have a complete emotional life and simply express it via body and face. So cool.  

There's something about using animals and great art depiction in a story--it's just a fantastic way to get kids interested, too. It's easy to follow the pictures and it made me want to read the words. Everything about this comic is inviting. When I was at the store to pick my comic this week, it was one of the easiest times I'd ever had. It felt like I'd found something made just for me. (Which made it that much nicer to see that there were so many copies of it, because that obviously means that it isn't made just for me. People want this type of story--I'm not going to feign an understanding of the business, or place a stake in it, but I hear enough about it to know that something like this even existing, being available--that's pretty special.)

But although it's good for kids, it's not just for kids. By the end I felt like I was reading Harry Potter meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer all in animal form, except that I liked it more than Buffy. A gang of neighborhood animals who are now Junior Apprentice Watchdogs (and a Watchcat), who use cooperation and "dogged" determination to destroy a giant frog demon. I mean, can it get any better than that? 

If you're not big on cute comics, this is not for you. Because, dude, this is CUTE. But if you're wanting something that's just completely different, something that just feels and looks special, but is actually good enough that none of that "specialness" really matters, then you gotta check this one out. I really liked it.

-Nina Stone, 2009

The first ten pages of Beasts of Burden # 1 are available at the Dark Horse website.

Comments

[LurkerWithout]

From what I understand the previous stories of these characters that were in the Dark Horse "Book of.." series are also online for free now...

[Kris]

I saw this in the store and was tempted to pick it up. I think this will make me go back for it when I go in this week.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Hey, what's the one comic she's kept up with? Powers? Just wondering.

Oh yeah, BoB (as we cool people like to abbreviate it) was pretty awesome. That Jill Thompson is pretty fucking amazing on the art, and you're right, the way she gets so much expression out of the animals while still making them look like real dogs and cats rather than cartoons is incredible. And those watercolors! Wow.

By the way, three of the four previous stories are available at Dark Horse's site, but the fourth one (which gets referred to in this issue; something about a werewolf, it seems) isn't. I think they've said it will be included in the eventual collection of this miniseries though, along with all the others. And if this sells well enough, more will be coming, Umbrella Academy style. Buy it, people!