I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got 4 new comics plus a hard cover collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read this week.
I bought the original “Death By Chocolate” comic back in 1996 or so on one of my forays into Manhattan to look for some comics that I might not have seen on my weekly trips to my local comic shop. It stood out of the pile of stuff because it was unusual and good. It’s also tough to categorize.
“Death By Chocolate” tells the tale of a man who was turned into a being of living chocolate. By that description I’d think it was a tongue in cheek type book played for laughs but it’s not. It has some super hero elements in it but I’d say it was more of a horror story. The man later named “Agent Swete” is more than a chocolate man. He can turn anything into chocolate including people. This, of course, kills them. That happened quite a bit.
That covers the first story in the book and the rest is taken up by a few more stories about Agent Swete that Yurkovich made over the years. The tales get more X-Files-ish as Swete joins the FBI’s food crimes division and gets himself a partner. Plus we get to meet “The Metabolators”. A trio of living weapons who were designed during WW2 to eat in vast quantities. Drop them behind enemy lines and they will eat the enemies fields of grain in mere hours. Yes, Yurkovich writes a really weird story.
The artwork belongs in a unusual comic art category that I describe thusly: flipping through the book without reading it does nothing for me. I don’t stop and think, “Wow, that’s a pretty drawing”. But upon reading it’s totally engrossing and the story telling and the world that the art creates sucks you in and keeps you there. You have to read it to appreciate it.
It’s called “Redux” because Yurkovich cleaned up some of the art and laid down his grey tones on the computer this time. I don’t know how much difference that made because I liked this stuff when it first came out but I haven’t compared them side by side. And it is a collection of stuff too. I have to complain that the lettering is a little small on one story but the rest was okay.
So if you’re in the mood for something a little different, a little out of the mainstream, and a little bizarre check out “Death By Chocolate: Redux”. I’m on board with anything Yurkovich does.
Hi Jared,
Thanks for checking out and taking the time to write about the DBC REDUX collection. A lot of the redos and clean-ups on the art (as well as the art effects) were done to help set the mood and tone.
In reviewing the initial comics that are featured in the collection, I found that I never got a sense that evening scenes actually looked like they were occurring at night. So there was considerable work done to the pages to emphasize the evening scenes, as I felt this was very important.
In an ideal world I’d have gone in and completely relettered the entire collection, but it just wasn’t practical (though some relettering was done).
Thanks again for supporting this project from my freshmen years.
david