MONKEYS WITH MACHINE GUNS #0 Reviewed by Nick Margerrison

Monkeys With Machine Guns #0

(W: Chris Lynch, A: Stu.art and Dark Smith, 32 pages, US format, £2.50)

The way in which 2000AD recruit their writers is the stuff of legend. You write a short story with a twist called a Future Shock and they decide if they want to buy it. The result of this is that there’s lots of ‘failed’ writers who’ve got loads of scripts lying around that will never see the light of day. Hence the following thought process often emerges: “Oooh, I’ve written a load of Future Shock scripts and Tharg won’t publish them. What should I do? I could always publish them myself…”. It’s a tactic which is easy to deride but one that often bares interesting fruit. I’m pleased to say it looks like this comic may be part of that bounty. What you get in this promo booklet is a selection of hit and miss short stories illustrated professionally and packaged beautifully.

This promo copy contains the following tales: Society, The Accomplice, The Other Woman, Stopped for Coffee, and the text story Wrathbones. There’s also a series of (in my opinion) utterly pointless adverts for forthcoming stories. Promo copies of stuff always confuse me. It’s difficult to make anything of a one page advert for something like The Magpye. Rather than entice, the pictures of some bloke with a swastika on his head hitting people actually made me think less of the comic as a whole. Advertising is bad enough in the corporate nonsense filled world we live in each day, I’d rather not see it inflicted upon us in the beautiful world of small press comics. Nothing speaks louder than the quality of someone’s work. Also I can’t hide my disappointment at seeing a text story, particularly one with awkward italics.

Despite these faults there’s some sheer talent at work here. The anthology format saves you becoming bored with an idea that perhaps doesn’t work and also makes you feel like you’ve got more for your money. The stories themselves are well delivered and there’s clearly a voice emerging here with something to say. I’d argue that occasionally the writer lets himself down a little bit in that some of the stories are a bit obscure and it’s a bit unclear what’s going on. This is either down to lack of skill or self-indulgence. I can sympathise with either but would suggest avoiding both.



I suspect there’s a level of self-indulgence mainly because this comic book is so professionally made you’d never suspect it was a small press piece: it’s glossy, the artwork is great. The stories are professionally written. It’s got a great flow to it. It just leaves me with a sort of “meh” feeling. Despite the fact parts of it work really well it lacks the effortless style of some of the other pieces I’ve read over the last few months. There’s a self-consciousness about it which I found distracting, but that’s a bit like saying you didn’t like someone because they had a rubbish tie. As a reviewer I would suggest that this comic book is good but not great. Although you’d probably think I hated it after reading this review, but I really didn’t. Honestly. (NM)