Review by Ian Keogh
The running joke about The Worst Dudes when originally serialised is emblazoned on the cover of the trade. The phrasing may be 21st century, but the tone is the carnival huckster from days gone by. You won’t believe your eyes at how outrageous this is! Look at the catalogue of degradation! Can you believe they let us get away with this? To give Aubrey Siterson some credit, in these days of sophisticated online algorithms targetting consumers, it’s probably been a couple of generations since the anyone pulled the huckster routine, so he might just get away with it.
However, open the covers, and it’s only going to be the naivest of underage boys – and it will be boys as no girl would go anywhere near this – who’ll be impressed with the sniggeringly presented smut and swearing (new back cover quote right there). The Worst Dudes are a corrupt cop and a libertine backing dancer forced to take the spoiled son of the Imperial Majesty on a search for missing demi-god pop star Zephyr Monsoon. They’re led from one scummy location to another from dive to den of iniquity, barely a page without sex or swearing in a world where nothing is funnier than a god threatening to blow his divine load.
Anyone over fourteen and with an IQ higher than their shoe size will recognise this as substituting what’s intended as shock and outrage for a plot, and Toni Gregori’s art is similarly lacking in style or taste. All could be forgiven if it were actually funny, but it’s not. Back in the 1990s Lobo took the same sort of approach mixing the obvious with excess, and it was handled far better.
