Review by Ian Keogh

It seems to be a point of policy that Jim Zub doesn’t name the two main characters sustaining Skullkickers. There’s the tough as nails dwarf always just on the verge of exploding in anger and a bald brute of a man with an unnaturally small head, but possibly even stronger than he looks. They live from hand to mouth travelling around, robbing rich folk when necessary and otherwise surviving on reward money. Neither form of recompense is long-lived.

This is a sword and sorcery world with a sardonic touch. Skullkickers opens with a werewolf, moves on to an assassination, and events following that introduce the real dark magic. Our heroes aren’t entirely sure what they’re doing, but violence as a first resort is an approach that works for them. It can’t be said that their hearts are in the right place, but self-interest broadly coincides with them doing the right thing.

Artist Edwin Huang starts a journey to excellence in this volume, but learning as he goes means we see the mistakes on the page. Here his preference is to tell stories predominantly via faces in close-up, which may be quick, but greatly limits the possibilities of the world at hand. It gets the job done, and the talent is obvious, but Huang’s subsequent evolution as the series continues is remarkable. Chris Stevens pencils a few of the earliest pages and also shows promise.

As seen by his later work, Zub would also become a better writer, and a couple of surprises indicate that writer is developing. In the meantime, though, this is relatively standard fantasy comedy carried through by the personalties, energy and the occasional good joke. Encouragingly, both creators are at their best on the final chapter, and that ends with some foreboding to be picked up in Five Funerals and a Bucket of Blood.

Alternatively both were combined in 2026 for the first Skullkickers Compact Attack Edition, and the same content was previously issued in hardcover as the first Skullkickers Treasure Trove.