“Banjax” is my new favorite word. It’s a verb that, according to Merriam-Webster, means to “damage” or “ruin.” When it’s a noun, it means “A mess or undesirable situation made as a result of incompetence.” Finally, it’s also the title of a new comic from Action Lab Entertainment.
Aberrant writer Rylend Grant has teamed with artist Fábio Alves, colorist Edson Ferreira and letterer HdE for Banjax, “a dark and decidedly wicked superhero noir that pulls no punches, that suffers no fools, that repeatedly gets knocked down, but always gets back up again with a smile,” according to the press release.
Here’s the book’s description:
Liard Mason, a disgraced former superhero, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, brought on by years of using his powers. Defending what he has deemed an ungrateful and ultimately unworthy city is literally killing him. With just months to live and a legacy hanging in the balance, Mason launches a violent and misguided Death Wish-like campaign to purge the city of supervillains before he dies.When things get really ugly, Mason’s measured and deliberate former sidekick, Abel Raines – the public’s current point-and-wink superhero ideal – is tasked with bringing his old mentor in. The issue? Raines isn’t remotely up to the task.
The odd issues are told from Mason’s point of view, the even issues from Raines’. “It’s very much like Rashamon or Showtime’s The Affair, in that we’re never quite seeing exactly what happened,” Grant said. “We’re always experiencing an unreliable narrator’s very prejudiced version of what went down. The reader is presented with each wildly flawed man’s overly slanted take on things and is ultimately left to decide for his/herself what actually occurred.”
Check out the preview below. It arrives in comic shops this Wednesday.
