Comic Review: Monkey Meat #1 (Image Comics)

A new anthology title from Image Comics springs into our heads and heads this week. Monkey Meat #1 hits the shelf!

It’s helmed by Juni Ba, the creator of Djeliya, a stand-alone graphic novel. In Monkey Meat, we see a similarly patterned multi-techniqued approach to the visuals and the same lateral mindset in the writing.

But wait, here’s the concept: Monkey Meat Company sells their canned goods all over the world, (but what is IN this stuff??) We are brought in during a guided tour for a little history lesson. Now, the Company uses their profits to fund experiments on their native island, to a crazy level. Slavery, legal pandemonium, and lab mutations.

What does this mean to the reader? It’s a bananas and fascinating satire of marketing and consumerism in the global arena. Unfortunately, the storyline suffers from being too opaque, and where the visuals might normally be counted on to be a sober counterpart to the wild and untamed dialogue, this time the visuals are even wilder and exhuberant than the writing. It’s a lot to take in, and the comic suffers, unfortunately.

Let’s hang around on our branches, however. If this title is a true anthology, perhaps the next issue will lend us a few clues, a leg up on the slippery slope of Monkey Meat Island!

Image Comics, Monkey Meat #1, $3.99 for 26 pages of content. Teen +