The Best Book You Didn't Read Last Week, Issue 15

Guerillas #2 (of 9)
Written and Drawn by: Brahm Revel

As Darren mentioned in his article yesterday we, the Comic Dorks, have an incredibly difficult task on our plates each and every week, where we have to pair down the pile of books each one of us reads and talk about just six of them a week. Since I have a much larger pile than either of my other co-Dorks each week I have a much more difficult task. I have to figure out which two of the 20+ I am going to be able to talk about. That's one of the reasons you'll often hear me talking about a book all on my own on the show (Like this week with Gigantic #1). So that's why fifteen weeks ago I also started writing the "Best Books You Didn't Read Last Week" article. Each week I pick one book from the stack that I think more people should be checking out. Once in a while it is a book that is so good that it actually hurts a little to have to write about it. This is one of those books.

Guerillas is one of the best books of this year. Without question. Brahm Revel is one of the names that needs to be talked about in every comic store across the country. He is a craftsman of exemplary talent and the story he is writing is nothing like what you might expect based on the covers or the solicit text.

When I first saw this series solicited I thought it was going to be a fun little farcical tale about monkeys with guns. What I actually found was a dark and complex tale of a man trying to fill his father's shoes, and a dark experiment by a strange scientist gone awry.

Looking at the book you might expect talking monkeys ... you won't get them. You'll get monkeys that have distinct personalities, non-verbal personalities but distinct nonetheless. Quite seriously this book went from being really great to absolutely priceless. I think that it is going to make for one hell of a collected story when it's done, fortunately it also reads FANTASTICALLY in single issues.

Brahm Revel is most assuredly going to become one of the hot names to look for over the next year and a half as this series progresses towards it's conclusion. From what I am aware the first issue is no longer available from Diamond but perhaps if enough people demand it we'll see a second printing of the quiet hit of the year, and my favorite book of the 4th quarter of 2008.