Written by: Peter Milligan
Art by: Robert Gill
Publisher: Valiant
Punk Mambo is a title I really wanted to like. Peter Milligan’s Shadowman run was absolutely fantastic and Punk Mambo was an interesting enough character that it almost seems like a no-brainer to give her her own series. With her vibrant mohawk and “I can do anything” attitude she was a standout character.
This one-shot unfortunately does little for her.
Punk Mambo #0 exists to serve to give us a bit of backstory about Punk Mambo but I almost wish it had never been created. While I was hoping for a wonderful story fleshing her out, we’re instead left with little more than a collection of awful punk stereotypes that I actually thought made Punk Mambo worse.
Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes stereotypes can serve as a blueprint for more. Milligan unfortunately spends way too much time with these stereotypes so that Mambo’s backstory gets lost among it and turns into little more than a fairly short (and seemingly unfinished) tale of revenge that’s dotted with even more groan-inducing stereotypes.
Mambo was a rebellious teen from an extremely wealthy family who gets kicked out of her expensive private school after she decides to spend all weekend “playing with safety pins and listening to Never Mind the Bollocks” and ends up cutting her hair into a mohawk. Rather than stay at home and abide by the laws of conformity (I’m paraphrasing here), Mambo ends up leaving home to find her calling in London. Once there she ends up falling in with some other punks and together they find a nice abandoned house to squat in and call home.
Like I said. It’s nothing original. And it’s where I find it hard to really care about Punk Mambo.
Along with her boring history, we’re also treated to such great stereotypes as arguing over what is truly “punk”, dissing on the “fake punks”, and all the other nonsense that media involving anyone punk always seems to throw at us.I admit that I found the fact that Sid Vicious is essentially her spirit guide (or voodoo djab) was a pretty nice little nod that made me laugh but even that isn’t anything new in terms of his idolization in the punk community. Which is also funny, considering that the Sex Pistols was a band essentially created to hype the punk aesthetic, help sell some clothes, and people got hired in just for looking the part. And yes, I’m going there, specifically because Punk Mambo has a panel in which Mambo herself decries how punk these days has gotten so watered down and commercialized and packaged for wide consumption.
The revenge arc of this comic is pretty great though, and I wish that we had gotten more stuff along those lines instead of the trite origin story we were given. Mambo seeks revenge against some old “friends” that sold her out but ends up realizing that revenge might not actually be what she wants out of life. And man are these scenes cool. It’s here that we get to see her actually do some voodoo and even that’s done in a pretty tongue-in-cheek way which involves Mambo essentially huffing some voodoo glue. It’s funny, it’s pretty cool, and the way she gets revenge is less mean-spirited and more of a lesson learned for the parties involved.
When it gets down to it though, Mambo’s story isn’t even truly told. We understand as to how she came into contact with her powers but not exactly how she got them. While this may ultimately be a setup for future volumes about her, it seemed odd that we’d get so much crucial information surrounding the time and place she got her powers but not exactly how. And that fleshing out of her character is exactly what this issue needed to get through the layers upon layers of terrible stereotypes.
Robert Gill’s artwork is definitely the high point here. The characters are detailed and varied. The voodoo aspects are drawn in conjunction to the rest of panel and blend in seamlessly. In all honesty, Gill’s art is probably the only good thing about the story being so stereotyped because he gets to go wild with the punk motifs and it’s very visually appealing in that aspect. The dingy clubs, the studded jackets, and the liberty spikes are all present throughout and are all wonderfully drawn.
And I get it if it’s all supposed to be one big joke and fairly tongue-in-cheek, but you absolutely need to have strong characters and emotions to make this different than the other forms of media that decide to use stereotypes as a selling point. Punk Mambo #0 lacks this and the main thing that prevents it from reaching a level of satire is that the story we’re given is super serious, it’s presented as super serious, and we’re supposed to see past Mambo’s tough exterior to the pain she holds inside. Mambo is a girl who overcame some tough things and took her hardships as her blessing. And she deserves a better story than one that treats her like a throwaway who’s past was ripped out straight from a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.
