Review: KISS the End TP

STORY

Ah KISS comics, both the love and bane of my existence. I’m a KISS fan from waaaaay back and I remember the excitement I felt when Marvel Comics announced they had do a deal with the legendary rock band. Those comics were fun but also mostly cheesy. KISS would reach its comic heights for my when working with Todd McFarlane and later with Dark Horse. Since then a lot of KISS comics have been pretty high concept but ultimately fail due do bad writing or bad art and sadly KISS: The End doesn’t buck that trend.

This comic attempts to be very high concept, a door that was first opened with the McFarlane produced KISS: The Psycho Circus. In this tale KISS somehow traveled to The Wasteland to steal a bass guitar, sword and even their music from the demon lord who rules it (basically he’s the Devil). You know there’s that old trope about rockers worshiping or making deals with the Devil, something that is backed up by the introduction of an angel who turns out to be legendary bluesman Robert Johnson. This already breaks a couple of plot points in the story. First this move establishes that KISS are not responsible for their own success as they have stolen from the Devil to achieve success. In fact when the Devil confronts Robert Johnson he brings attention to the fact that Johnson made a deal with the Devil at the crossroads and therefore owes the demon his soul. But Johnson rebuts this by saying he did “mighty fine without your help”“, but tts strongly implied that he made the deal. So here are two legends who have basically robbed the devil for their success. Chu has really mistepped with this point as it invalidates their entire careers. Stealing from even the Devil for success means these folks never made it own the sweat of their own labors and yet take credit like they did.

Its also established that no one can leave the Wasteland without the Devil’s say so, even KISS has to make a deal at the end of the book to get back to the land of the living by the end of the story and yet somehow in the past they travelled to the Wasteland, robbed the Devil and escaped Hell for the real world once more…wha? A big part of writing a fantasy story is establishing the world and its rules, and yet Chu breaks her own story logic several times in the course of this series.

Additionally none of the characters are very likable, not the main protagonist Jay, who is a complete loser, though he does slowly start to prove he has heart and courage by the end. The Devil’s adopted daughter, a human girl named Mania, abandons Jay to the tortures of hell without a single thought about him till the Devil sends him after her. She offers a lame sorry which he rather stupidly accepts. Even the band KISS come of a kinda one dimensional with Gene in particular being the only one to speak and just always wanting “his”“ sword.

ART

The art is tragically uninspired. The figures are merely ok, the figures are mostly undynamic with rather boring posing. It looks like the only thing the artsit enjoyed drawing were the demons. They certainly didn’t care to draw any backgrounds.Also the first reveal of KISS looks like a backstage photo! What a missed opportunity to make the band look as epic as possible. I’m honestly surprised Gene approved any part of this book (as he is notorious for overseeing KISS comic projects).

The colors are again just ok but nothing to write home about and the inking is completely inconsistent. It goes from pages with thin line weights to panels with incredibly thick lines for no discernable reason making it look as if different artists worked on this title, but only one artist is listed in the credits so I’m not sure what was going on here other than a lack of consistency.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Even being the KISS fanboy that I am, I gotta recommend a pass on this one. Story and art are rather sloppily all over the place.

SCORE: 1 out of 5

Writer:Â Amy Chu and William Messener Loebs
Art:Â Edu Menna
Colors:Â Jorge Sutil