A Friendly Game

Concept/Pencils - Joe Pimienta

Writing/Inks/Letters - Lindsay Hornsby

Tones - Lauren Affe

Publisher - SLG Publishing. $14.95 USD

Comics is still a pretty young medium in terms of a lot of subject matter. Aside from Grant Morrison, not many comics writers have tackled animal cruelty that I can recall, though it’s of course nothing new in prose fiction. In this graphic novel, Pimienta and Hornsby explore the subject initially as a kind of childhood phase, a rite of passage like vandalism, shoplifting or playing with matches that many children, particularly male, experience, one of those early tests of moral fiber where one decides what type of adult he wishes to become. 

It’s a shame, then, that the authors so quickly ramp the story away from a believable moral conflict and realistic consequences for the young protagonist, Kevin, and into the realm of B-movie horror. By having Kevin introduce the game of dropping rocks onto an already-dead mouse, there was the potential for some interesting questions about just how much he might be responsible when his friend Todd takes the proverbial ball and runs with it, into torturing and dismembering rabbits and puppies. One can kind of buy that Kevin would be conflicted about telling on Todd for these acts, but we’re only in Act One when Todd kills two schoolmates in the basement with a Dremel tool and shows himself as a true psychopath with his, “He-Didn’t-Play-FAIR!” monologue of mania. With Kevin not telling, Todd’s dad trying to cover it up, and then Todd’s murder of Kevin’s mother, the story descended into slasher movie farce and frankly, it doesn’t have the artwork or self-aware tone to sustain itself as that kind of piece. Production-wise, it reminded me more of comics I received in 2000 or 2001, not-quite-artcomix that aren’t sophisticated enough to find traction these days. Indeed, the acknowledgments at the end indicate this was a Savannah College of Art & Design school project, so it would appear to have reached SLG too late for much editorial guidance. It may get points for lack of inhibition or pretension, but even its darkest scenes are familiar and handled better in other media. 

Christopher Allen