Review: Ratfist

I don’t read web comics. I tend to forget about them andthen I have to marathon through them a month at a time. That’s not to say thatif you send me a link to your web comic that I won’t check it out, just that I’llhave to update my Google Reader so that I don’t forget. What the hell does thathave to do with Ratfist? Well itstarted off as a web comic and I think that it’s important to know that goingin to the book. I didn’t and the pacing of the story ended up boring me, losingme or just pissing me off in general.

Ratfist is fromDoug Tennapel the creator of Earthworm Jim. For those of you that don’t knowwho Earthworm Jim is I feel sorry for you. I’m not going to tell you who he is;I’m just going to feel sorry for you. You may ask yourself, “What has Doug Tennapelbeen up to since EJ?” The answer is… graphic novels; that you’ve never heardof. Ratfist is his newest graphicnovel which collects his daily web comic of the same name. Stop… do not try andsearch for it, it no longer exists.

I have to say that the "Creator of Earthworm Jim" aspect got me reallyexcited about this book, until I read it. Hopefully, now that you know that itwas once a web comic you’ll save yourself the headache of trying to figure theconstant shifts in the story and terrible pacing of the plot. I did not knowthat it was a web comic due to the terrible Forward that I skipped and the factthat Tennapel only speaks about the process at the very end of the comic. Had Iknown would it have swayed me to be more forgiving of its flaws? No, but atleast I could have told myself it was due to its adapted form that so manyproblems arise from and not dwelled on it while reading.

Ratfist beginswith a man dressing up as a rat. At first it seems as if he’s breaking thefourth wall already on the first page, but as we soon discover he’s telling hislife story to his pet rat Milt. He’s being forced to free Milt due to hisrelationship with his girlfriend, but he’s decided to take him out on one moremission. They break into Ratfirst’s alter-ego’s work place to prove that theboss is up to no good, or something. There he finds two things 1) a rat trappedin a trap and 2) a tiki key that plays into the larger picture further down theroad. Ratfist moves in to free the trapped rat when it bites him and thendisappears into his hand.

With not a lot of time to process what just happened,Ratfist is thrown into a battle with the night watchman who has the face of adog. During the battle Ratfirst left ear is torn off of his costume. He can’tdodge the mutt forever so he decides to blow in the dogs face whichconveniently causes him to taser himself. Here, Ratfist coins his catchphrase, “You got chumped.” He flees the scene and heads to his friend the Czar’soffice. The Czar is a martini drinking, tutu wearing… um, man. They exchangeuseless information and there’s a joke about the political system and liberalarts degrees that’s decent.

After that Ratfist, or as his alter-ego is known as, Rickyheads off to his diner date with his girlfriend Gina. Once at the restaurant,Ricky begins acting very strange. He gobbles down an entire tray of cheese anddrinks from a gerbil water bottle. Now if this wasn’t our first exposure to thecharacter outside of the costume, we might actually pick up on the fact thatthis wasn’t the norm for Ricky. Instead, you get the impression that a guy whodresses up like a rat and fights corporate crime may be crazy enough tocontinue acting like a rat outside of the costume. Instead, Ricky is turninginto a rat and must get out of the restaurant before Gina discovers what’shappening to him. Too bad she hasn’t given her answer about his marriageproposal yet.

The comedy of this story is abundant. Essentially every pagehas a joke. It has too because it used to release daily andif it didn’t have a punch line on each page we wouldn’t be seeing it collected.Because of that unfortunate stigma of web comics the jokes become over kill inthe story. Actually, they become more important than the story. There are several good ones including one about how Ratfist isn't going to reattach the ear and that if his crew is with him they should remove the left ear of anything Ratfist. Later in the story Ratfist removes his tail and the tail basically steals the jokes from that point forward. The execution ofthe story and storytelling is pretty annoying. I won’t say that it’s bad, butwith all those jokes the scenes in the story don’t move very quickly and yetthe story leaps forward after each scene is completed.

I can’t actually say that there was a story. Everythingseemed made up as it happened like one long extravagant lie. Tennapel has aclever idea here and even manages to make it a combination of Spider-Man andBatman without blatantly ripping off either one… kind of. The problem is thathe needed someone to reign in the story and not let it get off track as much asit did. The jokes are great and several of them made me laugh, but the rest ofthe story was a struggle to read. Mostly I finished the book just to see howthe hell you finish a book about a character named Ratfist that turns into arat. For the answer, listen to the podcast.

The art for Ratfistis very good. Were the story suffers, the art succeeds. Tennapel has a greatstyle and I think that having a writer on this series would have benefitted hima lot. Even in his closing letter, he came off almost too good to work withsomeone else on a project. It’s a shame because his art style has just enoughof a cartoon look, but still captures the classic superhero look. The coloringfor the series was fantastic and gave it a bold and sharp look for sure. Ifthis was in black and white I don’t think I could have read it so thank God for Katherine Garner for coloring it.

If you read the web comic when it was still up I don’t seeyou picking this book up for your collection. It was a good experiment for Tennapel,but it failed more than it succeeded. If you like Earthworm Jim I can see yougiving this a try, but you’ll probably be disappointed. If you do decide topick up this graphic novel then I would just warn you that this is not going tobe a book that you read over and over; and you’ll kind of wonder if you "Gotchumped."

Score: 2/5

Writer: Doug Tennapel

Color: Katherine Garner

Flatting: Josh Kenfield

Publisher: Image Comics

Price: $19.99

Release Date: 1/3/2012