Not the black and white busy artwork, not the bland and boring slacker characters, not the 'boring as watching paint dry' plot. It just wasn't interesting.Īnd so I never found a reason to want to continue reading. But with this food, it's all random ingredients from alien cultures so it is like watching a 6 year old invent a recipe in their head. Part of the interest in watching food shows is to get ideas on how you, too, can cook (call it inspiration). By the third page I was so bored I wanted to bonk my head on the wall. I can't say the cooking subplot pulled me in, either. Add in a 'tries to hard to be plain jane every girl' former flame and 'tries too hard to be quirky' side characters and you get the idea of what to expect. Instead of giving us interesting but flawed characters, we get one dimensional cliches: uber confident, bored, and perpetually insouciant main character and his sex obsessed bud (the inter-species sex jokes should have been funny, but they just weren't). The artwork is fairly busy - think Sergio Arragone's Mad Magazine work and you'll get the idea. He was once the proclaimed master but turned his back on that world.

Then Boys ends up on the cooking planet, meeting up with Boyo's old flame again, and being sucked back into the world of culinary art. Story: Johnny Boyo, a space trucker, and his coworker/undersexed buddy (a situation that could have been funny but really wasn't) are traveling along an annoying rather than dangerous galaxy, dealing with occasional blips such as sucky space ninjas.

Silly names, slacker leads, generic sci fi, and a noticeable lack of witty bon mots ensured this didn't live up to the promise of the cover or art. But I struggled through most of this purportedly unique title, unsure why I should invest in the characters, story, or plot. Or it can be very hip, as with Scott Pilgrim.

Sometimes, zaniness can be endearing, as with Tank Girl.

Orc Stain, Vol. 1 by James Stokoe