2013, Image Comics

I recall, as a boy, reading comic books, and seeing ads featuring strong men selling anti-bullying training regimens, with graphics including a big guy kicking sand in the poor geek’s face. I decided, at age 11, that the answer to such treatment was to not red comic books but become the bad guy in the comic book! The Strange Talent of Luther Strude is seemingly built on exactly that impulse.

The aspect most endearing about the comic is the Hercules advertisements and the scenes of Luther training like a monk in his room while his twerp friend encourages the tall, geekish—but possessed of an Elric like structure—Luther to do banal staff like macking babes. But no, Luther just wants to kill with his hands, to be a singular lethality. There is not a tiny hinny in this dark high school comic. Luther is—essentially, I think—one of the Columbine boys, with muscle instead of a trench coat and gun, avenging himself on a sick world.

If you are a comic book reader that has stepped away from the genre due to Thor with a clit, the conversion of white heroes to black, the overall leftward tilt of the ethos, and the increase in gay superheroes, try The Strange Talent of Luther Strude, in which the option to become a monster is preferable to being what the sick, sissy world wants you to be.

I'd like to thank Erique for this review copy.