Written By: Rich Tommaso
Art By: Rich Tommaso
Published By: Image
I’m a sucker for talking animals. It’s probably because I’m a total [redacted], but you show me an anthropomorphic creature, and I’m gonna give your story a try. Sometimes that means fantastic (Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw), sometimes that means strange (Animal Noir), and sometimes that means bad (Spy Seal).
I’d let out a long, drawn out, “Maaaaaan” but there aren’t any humans. Going, “Seeeeeeal” just makes me sound stupid though.
Spy Seal #1 is a very messy mix of tone and expectations. The name itself points to stupid and funny—think Secret Squirrel but with a seal—but the writing wants to be smart and taken seriously. The main characters open up with a painfully long conversation about politics and the treatment of lower class citizens.
Not only does it not belong here, it’s also poorly written. The characters don’t sound like people but talking heads, spouting rhetoric in an attempt to look smart and sophisticated. They then go to an art show and proceed to do the same but with modern art.
All the while, there’s no actual character to any of them save maybe the talking bird named Sylvia. She has a few moments to shine until someone shoots at her and she’s whisked away, leaving us with the bland Malcolm and a Russian spy who also talks way too much.
Oh yeah, there are Russian spies in this. It’s one of those halfassed anthropomorphic things where everyone is an animal for no narrative reason.
The artwork too isn’t great. Everything looks flat and bland, and while I get the charm in it, nothing fun is done with the style. That being said, Rich Tommaso does have a great sense of movement, so the few action scenes we do get are very fluid and pretty cool. They’re the kind of old-school Cartoon Network cartoon I was hoping for.
Everything else is … not.
I am told–because I’m too dense to notice–that the book is trying to mimic the style of newspaper cartoons. The more story driven/political ones tend to have just as much text as they do art, and they tend to be as on-the-nose and uncharacteristic too. The thing is, most newspaper comics are terrible. One-a-day strips are also not 20 page books. If this truly was the goal, then something was lost in translation.
Perhaps this would have worked better as a webcomic.
