Gehenna Naked Aggression #1 Review: An oasis of tawdry carnage

A creator-owned comic that favors propulsion over pathos, be still my heart.

I've been aching to read an action-driven yarn for a hot minute, something with velocity, a comic where the pages damn near seem to turn themselves. I sift through solicitations every week, and much of what I find looks like a snooze. A hefty chunk of independent creators still seem hamstrung by theme — "grief" and "trauma" chief among them — rather than action, the thing characters do to make the story go. Pathos over propulsion. Patrick Kindlon, perhaps too conscious of this as a comics pundit himself, has chucked his latest gauntlet into the monotony with artist Maurizio Rosenzweig. The result is Gehenna Naked Aggression, a blistering propulsion machine that is precisely my kind of trash.

I use that word deliberately, but this isn't junk. Craft propels this book as much as carnage, but exploitation is clearly top of mind for its creators. If the names Cirio Santiago or Andy Sidaris ring any bells, you'll clock what Kindlon and Rosenzweig are channeling here. Gehenna Naked Aggression (note the conspicuous absence of a colon, madness) reads like a gunsmoke-charred tribute to the schlockmeisters of yore and their films featuring lethal women pursuing (and being pursued by) violence — a shameless fun-cycle of T&A, squib-splattered henchmen, and gratuitous explosions. If Gehenna were a movie, it'd be direct-to-video and star Julie Strain.

Yet, for all its firepower and fan service, there's surprising restraint here. Any sleaze one might expect from Gehenna, given its influences, is dialed down, maybe because the creators are busy laying down their own cycle of chaos: shotguns and escape over smut and slaughter.

Gehenna throws us into the thick of the action, forcing us to play catch-up as it barrels ahead. It begins with a nameless woman (presumably sharing her name with the title, which fittingly evokes Biblical punishment) wrestling for a gun with a man. She gets the drop on him and puts a round through his head; as his goons swarm in, she grabs a nearby kid — Stephen, the son of the local crime boss, we soon learn — and absconds. Her maternal instincts kick in, and the boy, who, like us, is trying to grasp what the hell is happening and why all these people are dying, ends up aiding his captor's flight, her leather gear and generous décolletage undoubtedly accelerating his adolescence by the second.

There's not much more to it than that, but there's plenty to lure the reader back for issue #2. The woman's motives are revealed (I'll let you discover those for yourself), and they're suitably grim, revenge-thriller dross that justifies the trail of bullet-riddled bodies and bombed-out vehicles she leaves in her wake. Trailing her and Stephen is a cool, calculated blonde bombshell type whose blouse is one jostle away from a full-on wardrobe malfunction. The book is also more playful than I expected. Its widescreen chapter breaks boast titles like "Plan Goes Sideways" and "Obstacles, Of Course;" when your eyes scan the action, they sometimes fall on strange background noise like a giant shark or teddy bear playfully stashed amid the carnage.

I blame the artist. Rosenzweig is a coup; his figures tumble and lurch around in open space, his textures alive with splintered wood, brick, flying sparks, and blood spatter — the stuff that gnarly good times are made of. Kindlon's script plays to the artist's strengths, and their shared sensibilities give Gehenna Naked Aggression the oomph it needs to be effective. If I have a complaint, it's the color. Matteo Vattani does good work — he capably provides overcast gloom and shades of urban blight — but I wish the issue's palette matched its energy. There's a sequence where Gehenna unloads a shotgun through a cracked door that practically singes the panelwork, but too often, Vattani's grays and browns mute the issue in reality when the fury road our lead is taking ought to explode with hellfire. Maybe in future issues.

It's a minor gripe, and I'm happy to dismiss it. Gehenna is an action comic made by people who know exactly what they're doing. Better still, they know who they're making it for: readers like me who want little more than to be led by the lapels to a place of ridiculous danger and tawdry thrills. In this, Kindlon & Co. overdeliver.

8 / 10

Gehenna Naked Aggression #1 hits comic shops on June 11. To score a copy, click this.

Image Comics / $3.99
Written by Patrick Kindlon.
Art by Maurizio Rosenzweig.
Colors by Matteo Vattani.
Letters by Jim Campbell.

#1 of 4 / Unrated. Includes plunging necklines and exploding heads.