- Galactic Rodents of Mayhem
- Available to read on Webtoon
- Co-created & Written by Gilbert Deltrez
- Co-created & Illustrated by Sebastian Navas
- Colors by Tiago Barsa
- Letters by Deyvison Manes
A group of capybara galactic bounty hunters (Bash, Ripple, Mona-Lisa, and their father figure, a gunslinging gecko named Gan-Gon) find themselves on the run when a huge interstellar bounty is placed on their heads! Facing everything from viper snipers, armed armadas, and even a hulking robo-shark, can the heroic crew of capybaras come together as a family before it’s too late?
A while back, I ran across an upcoming title that was supposed to be released by… well, let’s just skip that bit and move on to what’s important. I saw the cover for Galactic Rodents of Mayhem (henceforth to be referred to as GROM), and thought it looked like what some of my favorite comics have always been- fun! There’s something about anthropomorphized action heroes that makes me happy, like a half-remembered childhood thing I can’t quite put my finger on…
Where was I? Sure, so that other publisher sort of went away in a hail of bad press & GROM kind of faded from my memory, out of reach but never quite forgotten. Thankfully, series creators Gilbert Deltrez and Sebastian Navas have a much better attention span than I do. After a couple very successful Kickstarter runs, GROM is out in the world and going strong.
The dialogue comes straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon, which seemed to be what the creative team was going for. While there are occasionally pages bordering on too much exposition, I reminded myself that this is a crazy galaxy being spun into existence and has a lot of ground to cover. Keeping that in mind, Deltrez’s writing style never strayed into the heavy-handed danger zone of talking at his readers rather than to them. And always, there was a sense of fun- so much so, that I got the impression that Gilbert Deltrez was having as great a time writing it as I was reading it.
Backing up that nostalgic attitude, Sebastian Navas is kicking it through the uprights with his artwork! GROM’s look may not fit the Saturday Morning cartoon mold, but let’s not forget that many of those toons were inspired by and pulled from the pages of some pretty great comic books. As much as the “Heroes in a Halfshell”, there was a little-remembered title called Boris the Bear, whose opening issue involved the wholesale slaughter of “the Teenage Radioactive Black Belt Mutant Ninja Critters”. Navas’s packed panels were full of great character designs, and the action was as gorgeous and dynamic as anything I’ve seen from the larger publishers. The entire body of work was held together by the glue of Tiago Barsa (colors), Deyvison Manes (letters), and Jamie Johns (in the pivotal and under-appreciated role of editor).
This is a book, a team, in search of a place to call home. I’ve been told there’s another campaign in the works that will be offering up a collected trade paperback for the series. Keep an eye out for that, as this is a series very deserving of attention.
Final Score: 10/13
