KILLMAN by Box Brown

By Justin Giampaoli 

 

www.komikss.lv
http://boxbrown.com
http://retrofitcomics.com

I was surprised to see Box Brown’s name attached to a Kus! comic offering; as far as I know he’s American and is the brains behind his own publishing venture Retrofit Comics, but who the hell cares about origins and pedigree when you get one of the best books of the year out of it. Let me say that again for my Latvian friends: This is one of the best comics I’ve read in 2012. Inviting Brown to contribute to their international line-up yielded some sort of heady distillation comprised of the essence of Jack Kirby’s cosmic affairs, Leiji Matsumoto’s ethereal space-faring nature, and the brash clang of old 2000AD Euro adventures, all packed in some slick indie Latvian box. It’s about destroying gods to save the universe, with a central core rife in this controversy of opposing ideologies. It weaves together bold riffs on somewhat familiar superhero archetypes and robot constructs, forcing metaphysical concepts to take corporeal form and get absolutely loud. The colors and production quality are simply unmatched. Kus! is the kind of brand I can get behind, conjuring up an ongoing creative showcase that propagates a medium of global diversity, as a global concern, for a modern global audience. Grade A+.