Writer: Skipper Martin Art: Christopher Provencher Inks: Wes Dzioba   Speculation fans, listen up. Ever kick yourself because you didn’t own a copy of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic? I did. Why? Because it was obvious genius, brilliant satire coupled with ingenious ideas. People discounted it without giving it a fair shot, and BANG, when someone actually read the thing, it takes off.   I see a ton of indie comic books. I’ve hit cons for years, and this year, I’m hitting them all. In all of my years of checking out books, both for friends, enemies, and even people I just bump into on a whim, hands-down, most indie comics suck. Sorry, they just do.

 

Sometimes, you find something that’s semi-awesome and makes you giggle. That’s Yirmumah, a great little indie that’s selling as such.

 

This is the first time I’ve picked up a book, read it, and realized that it’s going to be a surefire hit the minute people give it a fair shot, because it’s just THAT GOOD.

 

Ex Machina is a brilliant indie book, but mires itself down in a plot that expects people, like Y: The Last Man, to want to hear just how the powers came about, what the overall story is, and how things came to be as they are. They’re brilliant books, and I love them, but in the end, this peril/expectation takes away from the essential brilliance of the book. A man who can talk with machines and the last man on the face of the Earth. If I could change one thing, I’d take the emphasis off the slow reveal.

 

Well, welcome to Bizarre New World. One part character drama, another absurd, escapist style humor set in a rational framework, and thirdly, and most importantly, a limited series. A story that will go for three arcs and then end, because Skipper, the creator, has the whole story in his head, and isn’t going to waste time waiting for money, he’s telling the story he has in his head, making it sure it’s the best he can tell (he’s been working on it since 2005), and then getting the heck out of there. Exactly how a good story should be told, less concerned about the money than a good quality story (which ironically leads to a metric ton of money and a great return).

 

Skipper shot me a free copy because he knew I was a hard-assed reviewer who doesn’t really pull any punches. He let me know he didn’t care if I ever did a review, he just wanted to see if there were any problems with the story, stuff people will latch onto. This is usually someone signing their own death warrant, but in this case, I read the book and just about crapped myself. Take the character from Ex Machina, Invincible, Walking Dead, and Y: The Last Man, and couple it with a world where the main character is special, but as you’ll see, not just some schlocky superhero, through a plot twist I can’t reveal but which will nonetheless knock your socks off.

 

There are comics you read where you get gooseflesh...it’s happened to me maybe ten times in all of my twenty years of comics. At the end of the third issue of this arc, after a slow build, I got gooseflesh with a twist so damned unexpected it kicked me in the teeth. Look, I’ve written five novels. I know the ends of most every movie when I step into the theater. I have a writer’s sense. I didn’t see the twist in this book coming. It quite literally kicked my ass.

 

The really funny thing about this is that I don’t think Skipper knows the awesome he has in this story. He’s still humble and nervous about it. This book, if people read it, will sell like mad. I was completely unsurprised when I just read that AICN indicated this was the best new book of 2007. It is. Easily, it is. I’m already upset that it’s going to end after three arcs.

 

I am so sold on this book that I am going to be buying copies of it to sell at my table though I have nothing to do with this first arc at all. It’s that good.

 

The basic storyline, which I’m going to dance around so as not to ruin, seems rudimentary. It was so rudimentary that it actually made me worried at first that I’d have to eviscerate it, but as in all things, EVERY judgment is in the execution. We meet Paul, a divorcee trying to get a handle on his life, his kid, and his worldview. An everyman, but not your average everyman that’s an archetype, the everyman who does the kind of things we do. Munches too many candy bars. Flirts painfully with women and fails. Seeks something more.

 

He dreams of flight, and then one day, sitting at his little desk in his dead-end job, it’s just THERE. He can fly. Not super-powered flight, but flight, good old, will-it-and-go flight. Not too fast, not too slow, just the kind of flight you dream of.

 

For the rest of the first issue, he examines the ramifications of flight, and then, over the course of the next few issues, a dilemma builds so subtly that you can’t expect it, culminating in the finale, where you just gasp.

 

Skipper didn’t want to tell me it when he gave me the basic pitch, and I don’t want to tell you what happens now, in my review, mostly because, though it’s my job to tell you what happened and how I enjoyed it, I know exactly why Skipper didn’t. If I tell you, I spoil this big, HUGE moment that you just have to experience on your own.

 

Even if you have to pay postage for it, BUY THIS BOOK. If you’re a retailer, you should order multiple copies. This is the indie that could, and it’s going to kick you sideways.

 

I haven’t been paid to say this, I’m not getting anything out of this, this is just honest-to-god a book that I can support with all of my heart, which is so rare these days I have to shout it to the winds. Try it.

 

You won’t regret it.

 

4/25/07