Fintastic To The Absolute Max — Reviewing ‘Street Sharks’ #2

They bite. They fight. They stand for everything right. What a simple premise for a pretty wacky awesome series concept. We’re talking about Street Sharks, of course. The former TV show turned comic roars into its second issue.

It’s time for the Bolton Brothers to take to the streets once more in a bombastic issue from Stephanie Williams, Ariel Medel, Valentina Pinto, and Jeff Eckleberry.

Cartoons always have a somewhat simplicity to them. Not a bad one, or a reference to them not being “smart” or educational. No, it’s more that they just simply exist in whatever their premise might happen to be, often leaning far into it to the point of absurdity, but other times it’s some gold.

That’s what Williams pulls off here.

I mean, we open with the brothers playing table tennis without the table (and an actual tennis net) while dropping as many Shark- or power-related puns as possible. Later the brothers are wearing jackets and hats to blend in amongst a crowd, while said crowd is excited to have “people with actual fins” at the mystery circus. These being citizens who live in a city full of Shark vigilantes and aquatic villains.

The circus ringmaster was named Mr. Tusks and got turned into a freaking walrus! Gotta love this stuff!

There’s just enough character and world building to keep the focus, without losing the fun. Tight one-offs with solid subplot evidence. Williams is killing it.

Light with all the right qualities to make it dense, detailed, and dynamic is the name of the game with Medel’s artwork. She nails a very animated yet different stylistic aesthetic for the whole of this series. All the characters and moments are as bold as the Sharks themselves. Their masses and figures really fit alongside the smaller or different humans and other figures.

Emotional range is key as all of them are able to evoke and provide the pitch perfect emotive vibes.

All of the spaces are brought to life with a very baseline level of colors on the palette. Plenty of shadows and more neutral tones establish the overall feeling for the world setting. Thus, allowing the more fantastical or focus elements to be where the vibrancy can develop. The more middle of the road flashiness really stands out as out of this world level of colors. Pinto delivers and creates the right whimsy meets grounded mood this book needs.

Aquatic puns are flying around like birds of prey stalking a body of water for a quick lunch. Those puns are crafted with detailed care. Eckleberry infuses them with the right levity, seriousness, and emotional range as necessitated, taking what could just be a few simple words presented on the page and doing much more with them.

Loud and chomping all around the page without ever losing a beat.

Street Sharks #2 is now available from IDW Publishing.