Sometimes the title of a creative work can be so audacious it almost renders the actual content somewhat moot. Such is the case of Razor Bastard: Rise of Dick Machine; it practically dares you not to react to it.
With a title like that it comes as little surprise that the comic is mired in the sleazy underground aesthetic of ‘70s grindhouse movies and is also riddled with pop culture references from the ‘80s and ‘90s. However, unlike the regularly disappointing faux-grindhouse movies that low-budget filmmakers produce on a semi-regular basis, Razor Bastard actually retains the sense of manic fun that characterises such films, even in its more sadistic moments. While nobody reading the comic will have quite as much fun as Johnson clearly did creating it, it’s still a wild and entertaining ride.
The story involves police detectives being picked off one by one, beaten to death by something akin to a War of the Worlds tripod wielding phallic tentacles like metallic fists, but the actual plot is largely just an excuse for the genre madness such as violent cops, mad science and black magic to run riot, all the while Razor Bastard himself, a muscle-bound vigilante who looks like Bane in a gimp mask and is actually described in-comic as “the deranged love child of Jason Voorhees and Frank Castle,” carves a bloody swathe through bad guys and plausibility. Backing up the eponymous lunatic is Detective Blackstone, a hybrid of Jim Gordon and Dirty Harry (and whose sorcerer brother is a low-rent Doctor Strange) with possibly unwitting secrets of his own to be developed later in the series.
Some of Razor Bastard’s backstory gets revealed, and is actually quite touching in comparison to the ultraviolence of the rest of the comic, and he is shown to be quite literally haunted by the ghost of the man he once was. Through its relentless carnage, the story loses a little coherence during the minigun scattering of revelations, but in all honesty you don’t buy a comic like this for the plot. The artwork is all thick lines and angles, giving the comic an almost abstract look, with the only true curves being the underside of frequent naked breasts, while the rich colours complement the hyper-reality of the setting.
Razor Bastard: Rise of Dick Machine is ridiculous, macho, probably highly offensive to a lot of people and is a delirious and deranged ride from start to finish that barely even pauses for breath along the way. Whether these should be taken as recommendations or disparagements is really up to the reader.
RAZOR BASTARD #2: RISE OF DICK MACHINE / WRITER & ARTIST: PAUL JOHNSON / PUBLISHER: BEAT THE DEMON COMIX / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
