Battlemouth

First of all I would just like to thank Justin Shady for not going with his initial idea about two grandmothers living in a retirement home and exploring their long suppressed lesbian tendencies. While I think that such a story would make for fine reading and a world of excitement I’m just not so sure that the readership would really be there for such a topic, but who am I to pass judgment. Ultimately I think that Shady made the right choice in teaming up with Wayne Chinsang and going in this other direction. “The Roberts” is a captivating story accompanied by dark visual art that helps set the mood for the grim yet comical storyline.
“One Retirement Home, Two Serial Killers” that is the subtitle on the front cover of “The Roberts”. This alone was enough to make me want to pick up this book. The original story was released in 2008 as a two issue mini series by Image in association with Shadowline Comics. “The Roberts” tells the tale of two former serial killers, The Boston Strangler and The Zodiac, who find themselves sharing the same retirement home and similar fetishes. The story is primarily told from the point of view of the Boston Strangler, his thoughts form the narrative to this twisted, comical tale. In the story The Boston Strangler (Robert Sprunger) finds himself the center focus of a new resident to Shady Lane Retirement Center for Elderly Adults. After some very entertaining conversations in which we get an inside peak at Shady and Chinsang’s interpretations of what goes on in the mind of a serial killer, we find that the “new resident” is in fact none other than the infamous sought after Zodiac killer (Robert Steib). The conversations that take place between the Roberts are truly thought provoking and entertaining as we watch what appears to be an odd sort of friendship take place. Topics of conversation range from movies that have been made about the two through the years, to opinions on some of their favorite and least favorite “co-workers”. The novelty of the story takes a turn towards the dark when the Roberts decide to play a little game, but I’ll leave the details of that for you to read about.
The dark story line combines well with the grey and black tones that artist Erik Rose uses to illustrate with. While the majority of the art is very well done, at times you can tell that this is Erik’s first full length book. It is also important to note that the trade paperback that was only just released (Feb 11, 2009) contains an additional forty five pages of extra content. The extras are truly fantastic themselves as they present an all new extra short issue titled “Mr. Marbles”, in addition to, copies of correspondence between Shady and a certain Charles Manson (done for “Tastes Like Chicken”) as well as a lesser known fellow by the name of Richard Ramirez aka The Nightstalker (and those are just the best extras). This book is certainly worth the 14.99 sticker price. It is obvious that all involved did a substantial amount of research and put a lot of time and effort into was will surely be a timeless classic.