maiakobabe's profile picture

maiakobabe 's review for:

Dragman by Steven Appleby
4.0

This is a weird but delightful comic. It follows August Crimp, who has a secret superhero identity as Dragman. When he is wearing women's clothes he can fly, and he fights crime with his side-kick Dog Girl. Or he did, until he retired, got married, and had a kid. But now more than ever the world is in need of saving, because an inventor has developed a device that can remove people's souls and store them on small disks. People without souls continue living- sort of. But they have no joy, no personality, no opinions, and often no will to live. In addition to this, trans women are being targeted by a serial killer. August is drawn out of retirement and into the case, which is complicated, as he has never revealed his secret identity to his wife. Drawn a loose, sketchy style, this story is told in a mix of color comics for present-day scenes, monotone comics for flash-back scenes, excerpts from "officially licenced character comics" and sections of prose that describe the most violent incidents without any illustrations. I've never read anything quite like this before, but it worked for me!