- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Top Shelf Productions; illustrated edition edition (Mar 3 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1891830341
- ISBN-13: 978-1891830341
- Product Dimensions: 26.2 x 18 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,327,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Set in Turlock, Calif., a town TenNapel grew up near, this book is a farcical, sci-fi good-versus-evil yarn that manages to explore theology, alienation and social acceptance in a small community. It's the story of the battle between the abrasive good-guy scientist Dr. Ong and the resurrected Dr. Jameson, a malevolent 19th-century occultist/mad scientist who sought to rule the world. Ong (a child science prodigy and Turlock native) returns to his hometown after being appointed to direct a research facility locals call Creature Tech. There, he opens a crate housing the Shroud of Turin. Things get complicated when the ghost of Jameson (he was killed during a fiendish experiment) steals the shroud, resurrects his own body and resumes trying to take over the world with the help of an army of conjured hellcats and a gigantic space eel. Ong pursues Jameson while simultaneously acquiring a symbiotic alien parasite (it's alive and acts like a kind of leech sidekick), falling in love with gloomy Katie and galvanizing a town of rednecks to fight Jameson's horde of demon hellcats. TenNapel's creativity and attention to detail fill this book with pleasant surprises and entertaining twists. His b&w drawings are dynamic, comic and often startlingly touching. The images of Katie, Ong's sweetie, emerging from her comic but awkward shell are powerful, and TenNapel deftly surveys the complexities of social alienation in a format primarily intended to be nonsensical. This work is slapstick funny, strangely sensitive and well worth reading.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Out in Turlock, California, all hell breaks loose when a mad scientist's spirit opens one of the crates of top-secret stuff at the Research Technical Institute, aka Creature Tech because of rumors, essentially correct, about what sort of things go on there. Dr. Michael Ong, teenage Nobel laureate and the institute's chief, grapples with the slugbeast the spirit releases--successfully, thanks to a salt cellar--but the symbiont that powers the thing latches onto him. Now he has two insectoid arms and lots of extra oomph, which come in handy fighting the cat monsters the spirit throws at him while scheming to use the shroud of Turin to revive the humongous space eel buried under Turlock's terrain. If this sounds like some overactive big-critter horror movie a la The Blob --hey, those flicks should ever be this good! Graphic novelist TenNapel has already won an Eisner award (the comics equivalent of sf's Hugo and mystery's Edgar), and his goofy, kinetic style (quite reminiscent of Will Eisner's) makes a winner out of this crazed romp. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
HELLCAT, WOULD YOU BE A GENTLEMAN AND ADJUST THE MEGAPHONE? Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
HELLCAT, WOULD YOU BE A GENTLEMAN AND ADJUST THE MEGAPHONE? Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful,
By CloneRomyNo1 (Aurora, CO United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Creature Tech (Paperback)
I've really like Doug TenNapel and heard about his website from the Project Geeker fan site. Well, I've gotta say that this book is great. The stories really good, even if it does have some religious themes in it. It's not overtly preachy and HECK! It even has a large mantis and chest hugging symbiote! What more could one ask. A definite good pick if you like TenNapel's other works like th Earthworm Jim and the Neverhood!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Comic Greatness,
By
This review is from: Creature Tech (Paperback)
The art in this book gorgeous. The writing is really bizarre, and mostly hilarious. I read this in one sitting while waiting to catch a flight, and it was one of the most enjoyable reads I've ever had. This was definitely the best comic for my dollar in 2002. The complaint I hear most often about it though, is that it has christian themes. Well, yeah, the shroud of turin is a christian artifact, so by virtue of it being in the story, you'll have some christian themes. On top of that, the main character has faith issues to overcome, but so what? You don't have to be a Christian to enjoy a story about a Christian. It's a well done story, and despite my lack of religious faith, I found it quite enjoyable, and laugh out loud funny.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A cautious recommendation,
This review is from: Creature Tech (Paperback)
This is a hard review to write. There's good news, and there's... other news.Here's the good news: Doug Tennapel is obviously still a creative genius. His ideas feel fresh and well executed, his characters are sharply defined and (for the most part) realistically rendered, his artwork is clean and engaging. The plot is madcap, the pace is frenetic, the jokes are thick, fast and furious. If this was all this book was, it would have been the best of the year, an out and out five star winner. Here's the other news: About halfway through, the book suddenly introduces a crazed Christian streak right out of left field, one that only increases in fervor until the whole thing crosses well over the line into outright preachy. For the most part this is inoffensive. The simple faith over hard science perspective, the sudden inexplicable conversions, and the fact that the main character only achieves acceptance in the eyes of his community and the girl he loves after he becomes pious... since I neither believe nor disbelieve in the Christian faith, I am unmoved either way by their inclusion. For better or for worse, it is impossible to consume ANY product of western culture without having a commentary on Christianity at SOME level. What really is unforgivable is that Tennapel becomes so consumed with pounding across his message that everything else is subsumed. The book ends not with a bang but with a wimper, without humor or impact, and it left me feeling unsatisfied and vaguely upset that someone hadn't mention that this was an overextended Jack Chick tribute on the back cover. Maybe I should of expected it - anyone who's read any of Tennapel's rants knows that he flies on the Right, way way out on the Right. But he always managed to keep it on the down low with his previous work. Whatever the case, the message COULD have been delivered with subtlety and grace. Instead, it was delivered with a cattle prod; or, more appropriately, with a tranquilizer gun, all of a sudden, from a long way off, by someone hidden in long grass. Nevertheless, it's worth a look, if only for the space eels and giant redneck insects.
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