Gotham City Monsters

I really enjoyed this one, though not in the way I was expecting.

The set-up has an assemblage of anti-heroes/supervillains in Monstertown, which is a seedy part of Gotham inhabited by . . . you guessed it, monsters. The line-up has Frankenstein basically as the leader, Killer Croc (though he gets mad if you say “Killer”), Andrew Bennett (I, Vampire – yes, that’s his name), Lady Clayface (or just Lady Clay), Orca, and Red Phantom. Batwoman also joins forces with them in a marriage of convenience.

The menfolk are by far the most interesting characters here, as they have some depth and are to varying degrees possessed by inner demons and conflicted. Lady Clay seemed kind of unformed to me, Batwoman is just a cameo, and Orca I found absolutely ridiculous. Are those supposed to be boobs or pecs on her “chest”? I guess she’s the equivalent of King Shark from the Suicide Squad, and since this really feels like a slightly different version of the Squad – Croc, a member of that group, even says “Perfect, another squad!” at one point – I guess she fits in. But she’s just more muscle.

The group dynamics are nothing special. And the plot is that old stand-by of a villain – here it’s Melmoth the Magician and his army of magma Martian mandrills – using an ancient tome (the Undying Crime Bible) to destroy the multi-metaverse. Can the Monster Squad stop him in time?

Well of course they can, and they do. But getting there is still lots of fun, and gory fun at that. Things get off to a good start with Frankie cutting I, Vampire in two with his sword. Then later, in a face-off between the good monsters and the Monster League of Evil (yet another squad, from another part of the multiverse), we see Red Phantom exploding out of the body of a bad-guy vampire while Frankie decapitates bad Frankenstein with a killer punch. This is what they mean, I think, when they talk about comics becoming more adult. They’re not adult in any dramatic or literary sense, nor do they deal with sex frankly. Adult just means more gore.

So why did I like it? First off, Mephisto is a good villain: a showman and nutty as a fruitcake. I couldn’t be sure why he wanted to destroy the multi-metaverse, or even if that was what he was really aiming for, but he seemed to be having a good time ordering his monkey-men around and slaughtering the innocent. The other thing I liked was the overall atmosphere. Monstertown has a vibe all its own and I was grooving to it. I thought more could have been done along the lines of a sort of Universal Horror meets League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mash-up, but this was still a good time in a pulpy way that had me interested in seeing more of these guys.

Graphicalex