Advanced Review: ‘Klik Klik Boom!’ #1 Represents!

Welcome to the table,

Representation matters.

When I was a kid the only real representation I saw came in the form of Professor X, “Very Special Episodes” of random TV shows, and a kid named Wheels from Burger King commercials. Prof X always seemed to be regaining his ability to walk, very special episodes were cringey and pandering at best and inspirational porn and infantilizing people with disabilities at worst, and the Burger King kid had about as much substance as a French fry wrapper soaked in fry grease and ketchup.

I always wanted cool disabled characters whose disability was not their major feature. A story where disability was part of a character but not the only note of their song. I’m disabled but my disability does not define me. It’s just part of who I am, like my hair color or my love of the word delightful.

Eventually, the world would make very little progress, but it would be progress nonetheless. Xtream Ghostbusters had a character who used a manual wheelchair named Garrett who was really well-written and more adventurous than the rest of the team combined. Batgirl would find herself in a wheelchair for a time and became one of the first times I saw a conventionally attractive wheelchair-bound person in media who brought main character energy and was considered a love interest. I also found myself watching the exploits of the blind swordsman Zatoichi night after night on one of those random early cable channels that got lost to the static of time.

While I have only read the first issue, Klik Klik Boom! from Image Comics has the feel of disabled representation that feels pretty good so far.

From the team of writer Doug Wagner and artist Doug Dabbs, with colors by Matt Wilson, Klik Klik Boom! follows Sprout, a mute assassin who communicates exclusively through Polaroid pictures. Sprout was raised by her Vietnam veteran, doomsday-prepping, gun-toting grandfather in the remote hills of Idaho. However, after her grandfather’s murder, Sprout heads to New York City to avenge his death in the way that heroic bad-asses are want to do.

This book has a hell of a lot of style. As I was reading, it kept reminding me of G.I. Joe #21. It played out with no speech bubbles. There is dialog in Klik Klik Boom!, but that same quiet that I felt reading that old Joe book really came rushing back as Klik Klik Boom! established itself.

There is some smart social commentary on the nature of jerks in the opening few pages that really hits home for me. I also love that Sprout is not played for laughs and her disability is not played up as a kind of joke or punctuation, it just is an aspect of her.

Klik Klik Boom! is the kind of comic a little disabled kid like me needed and an adult disabled me is happy to see on the shelf. It’s fun, action-packed, and representative of people who don’t often get a chance to shine.

If you are a fan of John Wick, Smoking Aces, or any of those fast-shooting brightly colored romps with gritty overtones but fun protagonists then Klik Klik Boom! is going to be one of those books you really dig.

Set to release from Image Comics on June 14th be sure to ask your LCS to drop a copy in your pull box or head over to the Image Comics site and pick an issue up at this link!

Until next time, representation really matters. It is super shitty to live your whole life and be able to say “I have seen three or four people like me in all of the media and they all need to be rescued by able-bodied people more than not.”

Books like this matter in a way that I can’t express enough, so I really hope you give it a chance.