Deep Fried. Volume 1. Jason Yungbluth (Writer & Artist). Death Ray Graphics.

An slightly uneven anthology collection, the extremely strong stories outweigh the less successful entries.
Beepo and Roadkill feature in six episodes and all have the same problem, the rather aimless generalised anger and rage with everything and everybody that drives the stories is just too geralised and unstructured to hit the any target with force. As Roadkill notes the effort required to be outrageous increases greatly and effectively shocking anyone is getting more and more difficult. This essentially backs the stories into a corner that they fail to emerge from. They have funny moments, Beepo and Roadkill never engage with anything so everything they do is just so theatrical that it  lacks any impact. The art is great, it is energetic and forceful, the best parts of the stories are all visual, the sheer energy of the pages and the layouts is extraordinary.
Henderson Saves Face, when Henderson is insulted in a incident in a office car park he exacts a wildly over the top revenge on his co-worker. A two page story that is stretched at that length and without any impact or actual force. There is a sort of joke lurking very far within the excess, it might have been funny at much shorter length, or it may simply to be too slight to have survived any treatment at all.
The Salt Lake City Avengers  and No Justice, No League, are two superhero parodies that are worth reading only for the concentrated venom that Jason Yungbluth has for the genre. Most parodies have their roots in affection, it is very different to read ones that arise solely from bile.
Waiting for Planetary-a comic tragedy in 15 panels,  plays off Waiting for Godot and works ok if you have some sense of the play.
A Peanut Scorned (inks by Emil Novak & Gerry Coffey) is a fantatsic slice of science fiction noir that uses the cast of Peanuts in a astonishing way. Happily no knowledge of Peanuts is required to enjoy this bleak and fierce story, in a post apocalyptic wasteland a man with a robot arm searches for his kidnapped girl friend. The story is not new, the context and drive is, the whole set up is just a dark joy. The art is powerful and gripping, the wasteland of the world is conveyed with telling detail and enormous physical solidity. The story provides a solid framework and focus for the rage and energy that moves through all the stories in the book, captured by a story that can really use it the energy animates the whole story. The cast all come strongly to life, the fierce struggle to survive in the wasteland rings true, the utter hostility of the environment is manifest in every line.
Clarissa is a sexually abused little girl who features in three stories, two long and one a single page. Clarissia is introduced in a single page story that does not quite come off, the punch from the last panel does not balance well against the rest of the page.  Re-reading the story makes it much more effective as the knowledge is vital to understand the set up, the punch line then gets the necessary weight.
The two longer stories are pretty much flawless horror stories that are very nearly unbearable to read. The restrained art and tone of the stories allow the content to come forth without any obstacle. They are low key masterpieces of despair and hopelessness that grip the reader pull them in without mercy. The absnce of graphic detail is creates the room for the reader to fill in the spaces and to complete the context and events themselves. Clarissa is not sympathetic or pathetic, she is simply vulnerable and watching her be preyed upon is wrenching.
Jason Yungbluth is a significantly talented comic artist and writer when he has a strong story to deliver, in this volume there is more than enough of that talent on display to make it worth reading. It is a very bitter brew and a welcome reminder of the power of comics in the hands of talent.

Weapon Brown Jason Yungbluth (Writer & Artist), Emil Novak, Gerry Coffey, Jeff Eckleberry (Inking and Lettering Contributions) Death Ray Graphics (2014)

A very engaging and entertaining science fiction noir comic that has an obvious hook that thankfully does not create the problems it could. In a post apocalyptic world a mercenary with a nuclear power robotic arm among other enhancements finds that that a mission leads directly to a confrontation with his one time owners/employers over the future of the planet. A standard story platform that is a standard because it offers so many story possibilities depending on the imagination and discipline of the creative team. Happily for reader Jason Yungbluth has enough imagination and discipline to use this platform in outstandingly creative and inventive ways and applies the genre requirements of both science fiction ans noir fiction to great effect.
The obvious hook for this story is that is is a parody of the US newspaper comic strips, using well known characters in a variety of brutally inventive ways. The problem this raises right away is that a parody relies on prior knowledge by the reader and frequently induces lazy writing and art as the creative team trade on this assumed knowledge. A parody runs the risk of being an inside joke that is meaningless to those outside the magic circle and tiresome to those within it.Thankfully Jason Yungbluth is for too good a writer and artist to fall into the trap, rather he uses the parody element as a bubbling angry subtext for the full tilt ahead, all reader friendly, story that happens to have an extra element for those who care and of no consequence to those who do not.
For any science fiction story the context is all important, and in Weapon Brown the context is simply fantastic,a genuinely destroyed world with clever currency as everyone left fights for the most important thing left, food. The devastated landscape is powerfully and sometimes playfully created and developed in the book. The details are smart and telling and is where the threads from the comic strips are used as superb starting points. Jason Yungbluth is able to provide an rolling context for the action in a very natural way, the actions of the cast provide the information the reader needs. He avoids any info dumps to set scenes, it comes up as required as the cast interact with each other and the extremely hostile environment. Critically the villains are credibly appalling and with a genuinely forceful motivation rather than just being malignant, their opponents are as mixed as they should be given the circumstances. Surviving means that everyone is making brutal choices, the difference lies in degree and the choices made.
The cast are all fighting for every bit of pace and life available and this gives all of them and the book as a whole a tremendous vitality as everyone is demanding and deserving the readers attention. This makes even the smallest action scene come alive and the relatively few peaceful moments have weight and depth.
The art is a joy, the book clearly took time and the art changes and develops as the book proceeds before settling to an extended style. The changes are never disruptive, they flow easily into each other and are clearly the result of the same controlling imagination and artistic intent. This is where the parody element is used to best effect, by having a established gallery of characters to draw upon a huge and varied cast can be created and the artistic possibilities can be extended. The art captures the ideas of the book with tremendous force and clarity, it takes full advantage of the simplicity of the story platform to give room to details that add physical weight to the context and give the action brutal force.
This is a first class science fiction comic, it uses the unlimited budget of comics with thoughtful abandon to develop and surprise with ideas and locations. It is also a great noir story of a wounded hero who finds that, perhaps, his heart has not died and that hope may not be fatal after all.