REVIEW: Gargoyles Quest #2

A rather dissapointing second issue for the Gargoyles Quest series. A myriad of new gargoyle species that border on not being gargoyles at all, a story that is hard to follow and an overall art style that feels plastic and unrealistic make for a lackluster experience.

Set in the world of Gargoyles, the 2000’s animation series on Disney we have a comic that tries to make a quick buck out of nostalgia bating young adults who grew up with the franchise. The overall story is rather hard to follow but from what I can gather the gargoyles are trying to not get killed by what looks to be some sort of corporation or perhaps an enclave of rich and powerful folks. I can’t really tell you what’s going on in this issue, it feels all over the place and even the big “pay-out” at the end is hard to follow. It was meant to be a “got-cha” moment for the reader with one of the gargoyles having infiltrated the base of the enemy but the way it starts, I honestly can’t really tell what’s going on. It jumps around in time and when it’s supposed to coalesce it feels like something was left out by mistake. At least we have latin american gargoyles now that sometimes speak spanish, I guess…

I would love to analyse the story but truthfully, I wouldn’t even know where to start. I guess there’s a war, and there’s machines in this story, and even a cyborg gargoyle; which is kinda cool. I don’t know man, this was just very frustrating to read for me. I grew up with the cartoons back in the day and I can’t help but feel like this is aimed at me or rather at the nostalgia I should feel by seeing the old school gargoyles in a new art style and story. Yet it feels so out of left field to read about latin american gargoyles, and gargoyles with guns, and that some gargoyles no longer get turned into stone but other do. It’s like the story doesn’t even matter anymore, and the original gargoyle franchise has been hacked away at until a random blob of nostalgia is left. I feel bad about writing this, but I’ve liked other gargoyles books in the past, so I know there’s a way to do this right, however this is not it. I want to say this is a dramatic story, or an action story but honestly it felt mostly like a comedy. There are some very funny lines being delivered in the most serious tone ever and I can’t help but crack up. For example, at one point before the big battle goes down, the cyborg gargoyle says “I must recharge my cybernetics” with such seriousness that you would imagine he either does that or dies; and yet to think of a gargoyle next to a power outlet charging his “cybernetics” is hilarious. Like does he plug his tail into the outlet or is there like a type-c cable he has to put into his eye to charge? What even sort of premise is that? These guys are freaking mythological badasses with incredible strength, intelligence and the ability to fly and now we get a guy that’s part robot and they’re using guns?!

The art is alright, it’s not my favorite to be honest. The original character designs do bring a nice does of nostalgia back and they are handled rather well given the mediocrety of the story. However there is something to the art style that makes it feel really plasticky. I narrowed it down to the huge amount of rim-light that everything has and the way edges are outlinesd, it almost feels like a low-poly model of the gargoyles. It is clearly drawn by hand but it still has that plastic feeling to it. The colors are good though, that and the lettering are probably the best part of the story, but sadly good coloring and great lettering cannot save a poor story plot.

This was not one of Disney’s best works, I would do away with the series altogether because I can’t help but feel like there are so many bad ideas already in it that trying to fix it will just take too many issues to work. The latin american gargoyles have cool designs but the fact that they speak spanish, feels really weird. Like they are mythical monsters, it’s a miracle they even speak english, but now they speak spanish too because they are from latin america? That makes no sense, they aren’t supposed to hang around humans so why would they speak a human language? When you had the one language I always pictured them talking in “gargoylenesse” and we heard the translation in our language for the sake of entertainment, but when you have them speak spanish too you are acknowledging that the other gargoyles speak english and that it’s not being translated for our sake, they literally speak human languages.That makes no sense to me. Couple that with the fact that the latin american gargoyles don’t turn to stone during the day and you basically have latin american bats. At that point they’re not gargoyles at all anymore, they whole thing about gargoyles was that they turned to stone, so why do away that?

Honestly, I did not enjoy this. There are so many things I felt were wrong with it that I had a really hard time reading through the whole thing. As a gargoyles og fan, I can’t recommend this. I hope they do better for this series. Speaking of, just because I don’t recommend this particular series does not mean I hate all new-age gargoyles content. That’s not it at all, there are some really good gargoyles books published by Disney that are worth your time, I’ve done reviews of them in the past and you should probably spend your money on those books and not this ones.

Writing: 3 Stars

Art: 3 Stars
Colors: 4 Stars

Overall: 3 Stars

Written by: Greg Weisman

Illustrated by: Pasquale Qualano
Coloring by: Giovanna La Pietra
Lettering by: Jeff Eckleberry

Cover art by: Clayton Crain

Variant Covers by: Jae Lee, June Chung
Published by: Dynamite Comics

Reviewed by Antonio “Mabs”