Joe The Barbarian #1 Review

Having been a fan of Morrison’s wonderfully layered work on ‘Batman RIP’, his iconic look at Superman in ‘All-Star Superman’ and his most recent work on a dysfunctional dynamic duo in ‘Batman & Robin’, it was safe to say that I was a fan of superhero work. Other books by Morrison like ‘Seaguy’ & ‘The Invisibles’ I wasn’t familiar with, but I was keen to explore this work on his own creations, then Vertigo announced ‘Joe The Barbarian’, with issue once priced at $1. Perfect I thought, but the issue didn’t quite turn out as I had expected.

First off there is only a tiny amount of text in the issue. Tiny. It took me about one minute to read this issue. There is hardly any dialogue between characters, the main cast being Joe and his mom. Nearly all that we learn about the characters and story is from the art. Joe it seems has lost his father, and this has had a profound effect on the young boy, who prefers to lock himself away in his own little world of imagination, a world where cartoons and comic book characters come to life, but we only get a glimpse of this world right at the end. That basically is issue 1 in a nut shell. The problem is that it’s far too much of a quick read; we don’t get to hear Morrison’s voice for the characters at all. The main draw for the reader here is the stunning art provided by Sean Murphy. His character work is fantastic on its own, but the background detail is remarkably impressive. Joe’s house and bedroom are full of the little details that help us get to know Joe where Morrison’s text fails, and are all beautifully drawn.

To sum up, it’s hard not to recommend this book at only $1 but while the art is fantastic, don’t expect much of a story. I think Morrison will flourish in the coming issues when he explores Joe’s world and imagination more but I won’t be picking up any more issues at $2.99. I’ll wait for the trade instead, and for the meantime continue to enjoy Morrison’s fine work on the DC’s superhero genre of books.