The Forbidden Planet International Blog

Crack Volume 1 Issue 1

by Ed Hicks

Bloody hell, this is a strange one; Our lead character, Edward walks us through his shared house of weirdness in this oversized, full colour comic. On the way we meet a set of the most un-friends-like housemates you may ever see. Gary (naked bloke), Nigel (the clean freak), Jeff (stalking ninja warrior) and Helga, who works in forensics & has a habit of keeping her biological samples in the fridge. Which is why Edward ends up having an unusual breakfast, and no, that isn’t milk on the cereal and Edward’s just figured it what it is in that specimen bottle:

And then there’s Tarquin, the crack addict chained up in the closet. No, really. Like I said, this is one hell of a strange comic with a most unusual cast of characters. But it’s really nicely done, with full colour, polished and professional fully painted artwork and there’s a great turn of phrase in the dialogue. Maybe it’s a bit in yer face provocative, packing in the shocks with each new character for deliberate effect overall but it’s still put together well enough, dropping the laughs and the sharp dialogue in between the shocks. It’s a very good comic indeed.

No signs of a second issue yet though so it might be that this is all you’re going to get. Pity. I’d have liked to see where Ed was going with it, because from this first issue there’s just no way of telling, what initially seemed a straight weird bit of talking heads student life quickly took a big detour into strange and then we’re just left hanging for the next chapter. You can read the whole thing for yourself over at Ed Hicks’ website: Crack.

Richard Bruton