Review by Karl Verhoven

Readers who arrive at Escape From Peculiar Island without having already delighted in the previous volumes are likely to be few. However, the experience is cautiously recommended for the sheer befuddlement of trying to work out what’s going on. Penguins with beaver heads? President John Adams?? A superhero responsible for traffic??? A chimpanzee that dissolves things with acid????

Following the events of Thirty Minutes or Dead, Emperor King has reformed. Allegedly. To that end he’s accompanying his friend President John Adams, who’s been appointed Governor of the Peculiar Islands. Alongside both is Rush Hour, the somewhat confused traffic superhero wanting to ensure Emperor King really has reformed. Meanwhile Jamington Winthrop has been outed as superhero the Chandelier, but has had to hand over the intellectual property rights for his superhero identity to the IRS to pay a tax debt. The Chandelier is now being used to shill all kinds of products, but Winthrop finds a new career as a controversy podcaster – “I’m not saying every cow is fake, maybe just one out of every four”. And in Ohio perhaps it’s time for Captain Ohio to step up from Regional Hero to National Hero.

All this nonsense is Bryce Ingram and Mark Russell’s regular assault on superhero culture via the method of ridicule, the joke completely sold by Peter Krause illustrating as if this were a proper superhero graphic novel. The heroic poses, bombastic dialogue and preposterous situations are played with a completely straight face as if they’re actually important. Some would argue that’s many superhero comics anyway.

The lunacy is compulsive, and don’t skip the faked letters and editorial pages by Ingram, which are as funny as the main feature.