"This scattered scene of fervent calamity is to be the theater of your passing stage, aye!" - Paul Pope's Battling Boy

Battling Boy by Paul Pope is a great introduction to a new young hero that has an energy and style that many superhero and adventure comics are lacking. It's a confident book about having a lack of self confidence and melds mythology with comic book standards in a way not dissimilar to Gaiman's Sandman.

The title character Battling Boy is cast down to a world much like our own to deal with threats we mere mortals can handle, especially since the science hero Haggard West was killed in battle. BB's father is an Odin/Thor type from a stylish Asgard-like world who entrusts his son with a set of magic t-shirts that will allow him to converse with various animal totems and find his way in a desperate world besieged by wonderfully illustrated and energetic ghouls and monsters. This comic sets its own pace, defying your expectations and making seemingly odd choices at first, until you realize this is just the first act of a larger coming-of-age story.

My only real complaint about the comic is that this first installment ends just as things are getting started. We're introduced to the orphaned daughter of Haggard West and Battling Boy himself, witness a battle with a car eating monster and a gang of underworld hoodlums who wear bandages and kidnap children, and get the briefest of glimpses into this dystopia and how things work. It's the first issue of a great comic series, blown up to just over 200 pages. Where Pope plans to go from here is what really interests me, but this was a fun introduction.

The settings, from Battling Boy's home dimension to the dark chambers of the underworld at the end are all a feast for the eyes. Pope let's the ink fly and something about his art reminds me of the rough-hewn golden age comics I'd see reprinted in the backs of anniversary issues. The streets of the Earth analogue in this story are a mix of 1930's urban settings and the desolate expanses of anime series like Trigun. Every vehicle, weapon, and microphone is designed to look familiar, but also spawned from a slightly divergent timeline.

The book has many dreamlike sequences and has a tenuous relationship with reality. The plot escalates like an old school superhero story or Saturday morning cartoon, dropping ideas and concepts on every page at a Grant Morrisonian pace. Any one of the myriad threads introduced here, like the relationship between the thieves and their master or the mysteries Haggard West left behind for his daughter, could spin off into a whole other 200 page volume easily. There's nothing but potential here.

I was first introduced to Paul Pope's work by Batman: Year 100 obviously, since I'm a huge Bat-dork. He has a distinct style that I know turns some people off a la Frank Quitely, but even if his weird faces bug you, you won't be able to deny the man's ability to tell a story with pictures. If you want a classy, slightly more expensive alternative to a superhero hardcover and you have no time for dawdling in some other shared universe, this is the comic for you.

(While writing this, I learned about the Rise of Aurora West sequel to this. I'll have to get on that!)

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