Did I pick up an issue of Axe Cop by mistake? Jeff Lemire’s monster mash is going to zany places that only Malachai Nicolle could think up. They’re on a planet of monsters, so what do they call it? Monster Planet. They’re under siege by an entire continent of spider-creatures that the mummy kills with one flash of light, and what do they call it? Spider-Continent. Now they have to fight their way through an entire planetary ocean full of sea monsters and a continent of orcs — conveniently labelled with what look like childrens’ drawings on the giant map Ray Palmer shows them — before the planet crashes into the Earth. And this will stop the planet … how? What? This book moves. It never stops to examine how ridiculous it is, and that’s what makes it fun. If it were done in a really cartoony style I’d say it was too much fun, but fortunately — and sometimes unfortunately — Ponticelli’s style keeps it somewhat grounded. (The one downside I can see is that, while monster faces look great and suitably monsterlike, Ray Palmer and the other baseline humans are just weirdly flat-looking.) One other random observation: Frankenstein utters the phrase “Melmoth’s beard!” out of surprise. Ordinarily, you’d think that’s a reference to Melmoth from Seven Soldiers, except he didn’t have a beard. Then I remembered that, in the early issues of Cerebus, Cerebus would often exclaim “Clovis’s beard!” and Melmoth is the title of the sixth volume of Cerebus. Are we getting some secret Dave Sim humour here? One Canadian giving a shout-out to another? Now look at who’s pushing the limits of logic.