Anomaly Squad #1 Review

Anomaly Squad is the latest comic from the mind of Luke Halsall, who we were lucky enough to speak to earlier this year where he mentioned that this comic was heading to Kickstarter in March.

The premise is a simple one - on a Tuesday morning, all the heroes suddenly vanish. All we have are the leftovers. The Anomaly Squad. When the heroes disappear a Detective heads round to a shared house where a number of pretty flaky and emotionally unstable powered individuals are living and recruits them to help. These include a vampire, a man-sized rubber duck, a clock-man, a man stuck in a 1920s silent film and a psychotic woman called Little Miss Hittie.

As you can probably guess from the Squad, things aren't exactly going to go to plan with such a random assortment of characters. Misfits, weirdos, the leftovers... whatever you want to call them, it's down to the Anomaly Squad to solve the mystery of the disappeared heroes and save the world.

Artist Jim Lavery is tasked with drawing this misfit band of new "heroes" and it's a style that suits the writing perfectly. Just like with Mind Hacker, there are bold colour choices that I'm starting to think will become a trademark of Luke's comics as this is the third comic with different artists with vibrant colour throughout. This is a bit toned down from Mind Hacker as other than Daryl, the life-sized rubber duck, the rest of the Squad aren't vibrant colours. Backgrounds, carpets and some clothes though are. The first hero we see disappear, The Networker, is a brilliant green with the woman he's saving wearing a very vibrant yellow.

Jim has an eye-catching style that is allowed to shine thanks to the range of characters the story presents. Panels with Daryl are usually standout panels thanks to the facial expressions you didn't know a rubber duck could make. The insanity of the story means there's never a dull moment on the page and Jim really had his work cut out for him, and he raised to the challenge in style.

Rob Jones does a fine job on the lettering with a clear and easy to read style. All except when it comes to Monochrome which I found quite difficult to read. I get what he's going for, as it's a guy stuck in a 1920s silent film and it suits that style, but a slightly larger font would have helped for these few text boxes.

As for the story, Luke has come up with a fun and pretty bonkers tale that takes the world of superheroes to another level. The group of Little Miss Hittie, The Curator, Plastic Duck, Franko, That 90s Guy and Monochrome are approached by Seargent Raimi to find the mastermind behind the heroes disappearance Mr NAStay (and yes, NAS is meant to be all in caps). With such a bad mix of characters, will they be up to the task? Will they be any good? Well, I'll leave that for you to read and find out!

The story mixes action and humour well. There are some genuinely funny moments with a lot of them revolving around Little Miss Hittie. One of my favourites comes quite early with "you know what they say... unwanted questions lead to your throat being cut". That was a "wait, what?" moment that I had to reread and then just laughed my ass off. It's absurd and so unexpected which made it hilarious.

Finding that balance between humour and action though is where Luke shows his talent. Nothing feels out of place. Not everyone is making jokes and there are some real underlying problems with the characters which I hope are explored further in later issues. There's enough here though to show that this team isn't okay, both as individuals and as a team. They function, but how long will they be able to function as a team? There's so much to explore and that's exciting.

Overall, Anomaly Squad is a comic for anyone that wants a different hero story than normal. One with humour that is tongue in cheek with manic and sometimes violent action. It might not be for everyone, but for me, this is why we rate Luke Halsall quite highly. There's talent that oozes from the pages with his writing and Jim Lavery's art. It's fun, which is what comics should be.

Rating: 4.5/5

Sign up to The Anomaly Squad by Luke Halsall  Kickstarter page, because this is a comic worth backing.