Reviewer: Iain Burnside
Story Title: INCAdinkaDOOM
Written by: Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca
Penciled by: Jim Rugg
Inked by: Jim Rugg
Colored by: N/A
Lettered by: N/A
Editor: N/A
Publisher: Slave Labour Graphics
There is no possible way to do justice to the sheer insanity of this issue’s plot. It is so far round the bend that it has actually come back around and bitten itself on the ass. We start off 497 years in the past, with a dwindling Incan population trying to win the favour of Inti the Sun God by sacrificing 100 virgins. They are doing this as a last-gasp effort to save themselves from murder at the hands of the rather large fleet of Spanish conquistadors heading their way. Inti relents and creates a time warp that sends the pirate conquistadors 497 years into the future to our present day, where they start picking fights with the big ol’ ninja gangs of Wilkesborough, near Angel City. Ninjas and conquistadors are sworn enemies, you see. There is also a rogue Australian astronaut named Cosmick that crashed into the local rec centre and gets involved in the ninja/conquistador showdown. And let’s not count out Street Angel herself, a.k.a. Jesse Sanchez, who is the hero of our piece. Rudely interrupted by all this chaos while reading Charlotte’s Web, she meets the astronaut and then tries to stop the big bundle with the combined might of her martial art knowledge and cool skateboarding tricks.
Are you confused yet? Well, get a load of this… Inti is not just a Sun God, he’s a gangsta with a pimp-stick, playa cards, big gold dollar-sign chains, a hot secretary in fishnet stockings and mini-skirt, and a bevy of chicks to bring with him to the Earth that are more than liking referred to in certain circles as “his Angels.†Cosmick is not actually Australian, he’s Irish and adopted the accent because it was recently voted the Friendliest Accent on Earth, don’t ya know, and he is rather disconcerted that he has found a world so similar to his own after being convinced he has made it to another reality rather than just screwing up and crashing back to Earth. The ninjas have a little club house and a little Pirate Alarm and a little Ninja Mobile and an unhealthy dose of revisionist history that tells them pirates are no match for them. The conquistadors thrive on liberating virgins and liberating virgins alone, if you know what I mean, while the Incas keep on dropping those pesky virgins down the stairs before they can sacrifice them.
Like I said, this is complete mayhem but it does it all with such a charming wink while flipping the bird at comic book standards that you can’t help but fall for it. Rugg & Maruca’s self-styled brand of humour is by turns absurd, unapologetic and subtle in equal measure. For absurdness just check out the pirate who is rather confused as to whether or not he has time-travelled into the future or if he has actually time-travelled into the past to some pre-apocalyptic point before civilisation collapsed and then rebuilt itself in an eerily similar manner. For unapologetic writing just check out the 14-year old Street Angel bumming a smoke off Cosmick (said panel coming complete with random Surgeon General’s Warning against the dangers of smoking, naitch) while blatantly ignoring and cutting off his exposition. For subtleness just check out the moral and social implications of the upper-class “idols†like an astronaut being so ignorant and idiotic to things that a child can quite clearly see to be true…
Ah, sod it; don’t read too much into this one! The humour is so vast and so enjoyable that even a story spanning a few centuries and at least two planes of existence is not enough to contain it. That’s why we get the added bonus of a Ninja Dojo class where we learn the ancient ninja secret of baking cookies. That’s why there’s a superfluous drawing of Street Angel leaping onto a giant squid in the middle of a boxing match, with the squid wearing boxing gloves on each leg. That’s why the book’s “mainstream†cover is relegated to the back of the book and finds Street Angel flipping us all off, while the simple “alternative†cover is put proudly on the front.
To put it simply, this is the funniest comic on the market today and one of the most enjoyable reading experiences you’re likely to find for $2.95. Rugg & Maruca are a very welcome breath of fresh air to comics. Here’s hoping that there are plenty more non-adventures for Street Angel still to come!
