An overweight guy balances on one leg, his sneaker spraying the gore of tattooed zombies. He holds a long stick in his hand. At either end of the stalk are somehow placed two solid saws. A green frog escapes from under the guest’s shoe (probably a South African beetle). What do you think? Could there be soap and jam, something (not) nice for everyone?
Darrow draws handfuls from pop culture and various horror movies. What’s not there – zombies, skulls, tattoos, severed legs, vermin, brains, bones, saws, garbage (mainly bottles and cans of unhealthy drinks), asphalt roads, dead animals, writings on rocks, FujiTube and mobile phones from the previous twenty years . This suggests that we are dealing with some kind of post-apocalyptic version of our world. Everything is seasoned with a bit of Asian culture, but it’s just for the taste.
I have to admit that I laughed reading the (very small print) information-packed introduction, which, if expanded, would probably be enough for a thick traditional book. This text introduces us to the terrible, but grotesque world in which the Cowboy has to live.
Then we travel with the hero through numerous pages, waving saws on the bar from countless nasty characters with dried limbs. They’re all naked, with vermin crawling all over them, which doesn’t bother them at all. The drawings are so evocative that you can even hear the disgusting sounds made by the undead. You can also say that the saw is having the busiest day of its “life”. The author certainly likes cut off heads, limbs, gushing gore, etc. He plays with the convention, squeezes the last drops out of the zombie aesthetics and the archetype of the lone avenger. Will it appeal to a wide audience? Well, I don’t think so. Will he find new admirers in Poland with his Swedish buffet ? Definitely. After all, slashers also gather a large audience.
Like the cover, like the content
I pick up a solid and heavy edition of Shaolin Cowboy . What do my eyes see? The book is well printed and the cover is 3mm thick. Solid sewing and smooth pages convince you that it is worth spending more money on this work. If you like this convention. You can see that this recognized author and publisher did not spare a penny. It’s good, because you can put it on the shelf without shame.
“…ZZZZZZ…”, i.e. about the line
The presented world is muck, dirt and malaria. Oh, sorry, these forms of the disease do not hold. So we have muck, dirt and bluntly shown disgusting corpses and stuff. Darrow enjoys plunging us into splattered arteries and halved brains. It does so with great accuracy. Every detail matters. To make things more interesting, many of the characters have faded tattoos, but they are clearly visible on darkened, dried bodies with small, thin penises and sagging breasts. All together it looks macabre to people unaccustomed to such aesthetics. However, the fight scenes are drawn so epic and spectacular that the jaw drops. Darrow’s character movement choreography is really great.
” …if you must, die last”, that is the text
What can you say? You don’t usually buy comics to read long, baroque sentences. It’s the picture that counts. However, some residual dialogue is usually present. Here, if you put all the words present in the comic together, it would take maybe half a page (or less). What you will mostly get, dear Reader… um, maybe Viewer, is something like “NNNGGGGAAA” OR “UUUZZZANNGGG” and the like. Okay, even though we’re mostly watching Chainsaw Massacre, there are a few human words from time to time (mainly at the beginning and end).
” Super selfie, homie!”, or summary
This is definitely not a comic book for the whole family. Oh no. The level of brutality and foulness is high, although (thankfully) seasoned with surreal, raw humor and winks at the readers. People who prefer to read about love, sublime feelings and a nice ending better not pick up this work. However, those who already know Darrow’s works and appreciate his refined drawings, “muddled” colors and gallows humor will be satisfied. Although I have a problem with the subtitle, because in the case of content, you can’t talk about a buffet, but rather a lot of pork chops, after eating which you can turn into a zombie yourself. In my humble opinion, a more complex plot would have been much better; something to move the action forward. Fortunately, the ending surprises.
Extremely brutal subsequent boards make you want to put the volume down to rest from those broken spines, etc. The rather absurd whole, however, suggests that the author winks at the viewer, as if saying “Look, be outraged, be disgusted. I stuffed this table with everything I could think of (provided it’s covered in bugs). I spent a lot of time on this piece, so I want you to remember it.” Well, in fact, some people may dream about this book at night. However, isn’t the effort put into drawing this thick work sometimes intended to hide the shallowness of the whole story?
In Geof Darrow’s work, the emphasis is on the spectacular depiction of flying shreds of brains in detail. Our Cowboy kills enemies by the hundreds in the blink of an eye. Alone against everyone. And he wins, saves people, annihilates zombies. You know why we like books with a good ending? Because we want to know that justice will be served and evil will be defeated in spectacular style, which will restore the balance. Here the pattern also rules, as in the old Westerns with John Wayne. Until the last few pages, when it turns into, so to speak, an anti-western. And leaves us with “But how?”.
The future Darrow sees her doesn’t look bright – people turned into zombies, before littering their surroundings and killing everything that was alive. Only the ectotherms survived. The few human beings we see are also devoid of higher feelings. Only one savior – Cowboy – has a good heart and saves the honor of humanity. Should this make us think?
