Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Elephantmen #37
Image Comics
Starkings & Medellin
The latest issue of Elephantmen continues to play with the timeline as the issue explores a serial killer on the loose in the "day before yesterday" fashion. This issue has a ton of characters and actually ends up revealing quite a bit of back-story on some of the previous plots from issues 26-34 (or thereabouts). The book is a dense read with two completely different and interesting back-up stories. Overall you really can't go wrong picking this book up. Especially if you like science fiction, detective work, serial killers and hot babes.
The cover basically says it all. The long deceased character called Tusk (Razor) is back and he is wielding a sickle. If you noticed that quite a few Elephantmen have been murdered recently you'd be correct and some of the other Elephantmen have picked up on this as well. Hip, Horn and Ebony all have some level of involvement in this issue as do plenty of other characters as Starkings continues to advance many subplots.
As more things get explained in this issue though, I can't help but think up more questions. For example, what does happen to an ordinary female that gives birth to an Elephantman? What happened to the Elephantmen from other countries like China? Could they be involved in the killings somehow? Which characters still have an active chip in them? Luckily if you don't feel like thinking too much, the book is a very entertaining read and that goes double for the artwork.
Medellin continues to push the boundaries in the art department. The horror-slasher-flick element to the book was handled in an outstanding fashion. I liked how some of the murder scenes were simply close-ups of very specific pieces of the characters and/or blood splatters. Gory? Absolutely, but Medellin still manages to sneak in some of what is probably the strongest point in his arsenal: drawing women. Axel clearly has mastered the female figure and he is able to show that off several times in this book.
Elephantmen is a saga. Often issues call on events from months or years ago, which is really taxing on a reader's memory. On the other hand sometimes issues will make you have random questions that seem to be unrelated to the story as your brain tries to piece together the timeline and the flow of things. The only sure thing is that Starkings is not taking the reader on a wild goose chase. Can geese be Elephantmen? I definitely recommend checking out this series and issue.
4 out of 5 Geek Goggles
