Advance Review: ‘The Schlub’ #1 – Haven’t We Been Here Before?
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
When the worst person in the world becomes a superhero, hilarity ensues. The problem is this story is a familiar one and doesn’t blaze a new path – at least not yet. Add to that page after page of overloaded panels and you get a schlub-overload.
Overall
7.5/10There’s no nice way to put this: Roger Dalton is a schlub.
He’s an overweight loser who never amounted to anything more than a second-rate dentist with questionable ethics. He’s behind on the rent and his dad and brother taunt him with billboard highlighting their successful business. The only person willing to have a semi-normal conversation with him is his ex-wife.
So yeah, schlub city.
But then, crashing through his office wall, comes superhero Cirrus and the evil sorcerer Wyrm locked in a pitched battle. A magical artifact swaps the minds of Roger and Cirrus so the hero is now the schlub and vice versa.
Writer Ryan Stegman and Kenny Porter are responsible for this amusing, if predictable, tale. There are really no surprises in this premiere issue. Roger is every bit the loser readers will assume he is from the title. Cirrus is all-powerful and noble. Wyrm is vengeful and foreboding.
In fact, it feels a lot like another Image Comics series, The Scumbag. Take the worse person you can imagine and make him the strongest man on the planet. To avoid further feelings of déjà vu, the creative team needs to find their own unique take on this familiar story – and quickly.
One differentiator is artist Tyrell Cannon illustrations, which have a somewhat-cartoony feel to them. He certainly grabs the reader from the first page, as Roger is talking on his cell phone while probing a patient’s plaque-filled mouth. That, though, is the high-water mark for the issue.
Yes, he provides a dynamic double-page spread of the battle, but there’s so much going on in every panel that it can cause a sensory overload. Some artists are able to pull that off with aplomb. Here it just feels like excess, though. It’s as if Cannon feels obliged to fill every square inch of every page. Still though, he gets points for being so earnest. There are no throwaway panels in this book. You’ll spend much more time soaking in the pages than you would for a typical comic.
The real success of The Schlub will be determined in the next issue or two. If the creative team can chart its own path forward, it could be something memorable. Otherwise, this series will be related to just another me-too story.
The Schlub #1 will be available for purchase on August 23, 2023.
