There’s no faulting The Anchor #1 (Boom Studios) for a lack of scope. It opens in Hell itself, where the mysterious title character is single-handedly responsible for beating back the hordes of hell with his big, pink fists.

It then jumps to downtown Reykjavik, Iceland, where a giant ice monster is on a rampage. The title character, referred to as God’s anchor to hell by a member of the demon horde and Clem by a volunteer worker who notices he’s wearing a symbol of Saint Clement, is there too, fighting the monster.

“My soul is in hell,” he explains. “It wrestles with demons there…the wounds my soul suffers are borne by my earthly body.”

Writer Phil Hester doesn’t delve much deeper into who The Anchor is, how he came to be, or why his memory seems so addled and he sometimes talks in psalms without even realizing they’re psalms (Actually, the fact that the ice monster hits him with a truck might explain those last two, come to think of it).

And while all that is usually welcome in a first issue (especially see this is a $3.99 comic), that all that info isn’t present certainly isn’t because Hester’s dragging his feet or anything. He does establish plenty of intriguing clues and suggestions, introduces and half-introduces some characters, sketches out a concept and, most importantly, establishes an appealing tone that teeters between supernatural melodrama and comedy.

Given the Big Guy Who Punches Out Monsters protagonist, and the mixture of Christian mythology and rollicking action, the most obvious comparison is probably the popular and well-regarded Hellboy (Whether or not the creators will take that a compliment or not, I don’t know; I suspect it might be one that hear often enough to get sick of it pretty quickly).

Brian Churilla’s artwork, however, doesn’t really evoke Mike Mignola’s at all, with the exception of at least one of the two covers he offers (There are at least three covers on this issue).

Casting about for someone’s art to compare Churilla’s to, Eric Powell’s comes quickly to mind (Again, this may have a lot to do with the Big Guy Who Punches Out Monsters thing).

Churilla’s art is definitely softer, rounder and seemingly fuller and deeper-looking than Mignola’s. His character designs are also far more cartoony (And yes, I realize how silly it seems to call any comics art cartoony, when so much of it is provided by, you know, cartoonists). Whether human or monster, they’re all a bit exaggerated for expressiveness’ sake, making for panels that are just a whole lot of fun to look at, whatever might be going on in them.

Perhaps more importantly than either Churilla’s skills as an artist or Hester’s as a writer, however, is the fact that two of them seem to work really well together. There’s a real chemistry evident in the book, and a few of the scenes just sing.

I’m definitely interested in seeing #2, which is exactly how a reader should feel after reading a new #1.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 2:57 pm and is filed under BOOM!, Caleb's reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.