Suicide Jockeys from Source Point Press in association with Half Evil Comics and Rising Spirit Entertainment is both a blast from the past and quite contemporary. Its very much a love letter to the 80s style of action movies combined with kaiju and mech media like Pacific Rim, Godzilla and Super Sentai. The opening scene gives a look at a world of transformable vehicles, time travel, tech FAR surpassing the expectations of the 1997 (a time the team is initially from) and braggadocios, adrenaline and alcohol fueled men and women of action and science! The comic shows us our heroes these so called Suicide Jockeys at their very best and then their leader; Denver Wallace, our main protagonist, at his very worst. Its a great starting point, hitting the reader with some up front excitement that also serves as exposition for the team, their mission and capabilities before gut punching with the transition to a present day event showing a broken team and Denver as a fallen hero. It is a very effective ploy and it worked to generate additional interest in me as a reader. What has happened and why?
Grant skillfully sets up Denver as a man out of time even though he returned from the time travel incident in the opening scene. In much the same way as Cobra Kai’s Johnny Lawrence, Denver is stuck in the past, living in the shadows of his own life and his greatest failure. We get to see just how far he has fallen and get hints along the way at what became of the team and how deep the divide goes. Grant does not rush the reveals or flashbacks, teasing it out along the way in a fashion that keeps both the current narrative and the events of the past interesting and relevant. Denver is a purposeful stereotype of the 80’s action hero even more so than the rest of his team. He has all the swagger, the lingo, the attitude and like the aforementioned Johnny Lawrence that no longer serves him as he has become a drunken misanthrope. Like Stallone in Demolition Man, Denver has become something of a dinosaur with no purpose in life, until of course someone finds one for him.
This is where the plot gets even more interesting. Grant cleverly uses current events to add punctuation to his story points in the present day, thankfully without being preachy to the audience (very refreshing) as a means of demonstrating that the Jockey’s trip to the past has altered their timeline for the worse. Cheekily he also tosses out that, oh yeah, giant monsters attacking cities is a thing since 1997. A very humous little way of adding in that fact as if that is the least troublesome thing in a world plagued by pandemics, civil unrest and questionable elections were not enough. Really made me chuckle that bit. Correcting this divergence will be the focus of the series along with the other subplots introduced and I must say I’m on board. We have character, story and stakes and all of them work.
ART
Dias’s drawing is crisp and clean and he is good storyteller. He has good page flow, varies his angles and his characters all look like individuals. He clearly has no trouble making each person look like different people and sticking to his model sheet. A nice touch are his background elements. He peppers the background with things like Power Ranger, Godzilla and Ultraman kaiju (and I must mention that Grant does some of the same with his dialogue, fans will recognize references to famous Toho films).
Where the art leaves me unimpressed is the coloring. Now there is nothing wrong with the rendering. Everything is colored well and nothing important disappears into the background. Which is a bit of a feat because the color choices are to my taste rather dull. Now this choice might be on purpose, to separate the past from the present and to further establish Denver’s outlook in different eras. However, I find the use of so many dull tones of grays and browns to make me crave color in the way I would when watching a Zack Snyder film. It seems to be a stylistic choice but I would enjoy a bit more POP in the art.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Suicide Jockeys is both a romp and a tonal serious piece about strong personalities and the events and choices that shape people into heroes whether they stand tall or fall far. Recommended.
SCORE: 4.5 out of 5
Writer: Ryland Grant
Artist: Davi Leon Dias
Colors: Iwan Joko Triyono
Letterer: HdE Productions
Produced by: RJ Hendricks
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