ODD YARNS – Review

ODD YARNS, from Resistance Comics in March 2022, delivers two odd tales for your reading pleasure. A supercomputer becomes too super, and an army grunt inherits the power of gods.

The Details

• Written By: John Luzar
• Art By: Lane Lloyd
• Colors By: Laurel Dundee
• Letters By: Toben Racicot
• Cover Art By: Lane Lloyd, Laurel Dundee (cover A)
• Cover Price: $5 (digital pdf via Kickstarter)
• Release Date: March 2022 (estimated)

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Was It Good?

Well, okay. True to its name, Resistance Comics asked us to review its latest seriocomic offering of a two-story anthology interlaced with tongue-in-cheek versions of classic comic book ads with a decidedly #Resistance tone. The ads sound like they were written by a Gender Studies major from Portland Community College, but the main stories are relatively #Resistance free. The net result is a comic with wild swings in tone from straight farce to sincere sci-fi to everything in between. Depending on your thirst for variety, that may be just what you’re looking for.

Since there are several disparate pieces of content, we’ll focus on the overall writing of the two stories and the art.

Starting with the art. It’s generally good for the spirit of the stories being told. Both stories have a comic strip design that suits the intentionally silly writing style. The real standout in the art is Dundee’s coloring which elevates the flat, Andy Capp-esque characters into a more polished and higher quality collection of visuals.The writing, generally, is okay. What catches you off guard is the mildly serious approach to the genres of science fiction and magic in each of the respective stories. The execution for each story is over-the-top in some panels and sincerely straight in others. It’s difficult to tell if the writers were going for laughs that didn’t always land or if the mix in tones was intentional. That said, the stories were relatively straight forward with the only hiccup in readability appearing during the Day of Wrath! story and its abundant use of ancient dialectal names which look nearly impossible to pronounce.

Keep scrolling for a closer look at the covers, or Click Here to jump right to the story description with some spoilers.

What’s It About?

[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]

As with all our anthology reviews, we’ll touch on each brief shortly and highlight what worked or didn’t.

Winston Weerd: Agent of C.H.A.S.M.

Winston Weerd is a brilliant researcher and surgeon whose hands were mangled in a bowling accident. His only hope is to seek help from an experimental AI computer designed to solve any problem. Unfortunately, the military publicly tells the world C.H.A.S.M. has been shut down while it secretly is relocated to prevent its theft by the Russian. When Weerd learns the truth and sets out to find the computer before the Russians do, an unexpected collision is in the making.

This was a sometimes serious short that eventually turns into an unconventional superhero origin story. The silliness of the circumstances is played tongue in cheek, but once the proceedings get weird, the conclusion generates a fair amount of intrigue for what comes next.

Franky Frenzy: The Magicommando in Day of Wrath!

Acolytes in the Realms of Light are under siege by an army of demonic monsters. When all hope and prayers to Takhat-Ra appear lost, Franky Frenzy arrives to save the day. Frenzy is no ordinary soldier, and we learn he wields magical weapons that were bestowed upon him after a devastating loss.

Sillier than the previous story, this short plays out as another type of intriguing superhero origin story. The main down point, however, is the abundance of archaic names and titles that severely bogged down the reading pace.

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