Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot (Second Edition)

In a modern (for the 90s) Tokyo, scientists, foolish with power, successfully recreate primordial ooze, only to discover it's the perfect host body for an evil, Cthulhu-like (in mindset and motive at least) creature who breaks free and follows the trend of giant monsters rampaging on Tokyo. What's worse, citizens discover after they've thrown everything at it from missiles and tanks to helicopters and super (prototype) boy robots, the creature isn't just out to destroy humanity, it can infect them, turning them into mutant dinosaur creatures that can further spread the disease, destruction and chaos. In a last ditch effort commanders beg for help from the good old U.S.A. and from the sea comes the Iron-Giant-ish hero, The Big Guy. All American, a true blue hero, the Big Guy is determined to defeat the evil creature, save the innocents mutated into monsters and uphold decency standards all the while. The prose is a bit pretentious at times, and a bit old fashioned other times, but both reinforce the character of the Big Guy and heroic feel of the tale. The only bad thing to say is that this two part series went nowhere as a comic, introducing dynamic characters but going no further, and, while the Fox Kids TV show (a mere 26 episodes) was a hilarious, spot on blend of tongue-in-cheek jabs at mechs, robotechnology, speculations on the future, Godzilla-inspired disasters and superhero comics, reading this book is a reminder that the Big Guy and Rusty still hasn't seen DVD release. Oh well, there's Youtube.

The story in this book is not becoming my concern at all. What amazed me, it's the illustrations, the details and the unique characters like 'Big Guy and Rusty'. The book is more than just a comic but consider my best own comic collection from one of the best cult culture comic book.

The first thing you'll notice is Geoff Darrow's knotty tight sublime hyper-etched artwork, lines running like veins into the architecture and broken glass that is Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot. This is not the Miller of Sin City or DK Returns et cetera,,,,watch him rip away the Chandler influence and dive into Japanese toy culture via Godzilla gggrraaaaaauu. This won't give you a typical Milleresque vision, whatever that means, but it's a cool trip through a world owned by toys and monsters. Great book for kids. Bedtime story and such.

This book is the black and white and 'dialogue-less' version of a similar comic title released by Darkhorse which is in colour and contains dialogue. If these elements are important to you, you may want to purchase the original version. Having said that, it is interesting that the narrative runs very smoothly even without the dialogue as the Big Guy and Rusty stories are very simple 'Rescue the World from Monsters' narratives.The reason some may want to purchase this is to drool over the very detailed inking artwork done by the artists which is lost in the smaller version and obscured by the dialogue balloons. Personally I prefer this 'King-size' version as it allows me to examine in superb detail, the careful, intricate and excellent illustrations.