In the comic by Mark Andrew Smith and James Stokoe, a team of former pros find themselves in a match for life against hideous monsters
A baseball team, a coach who keeps arguing with his past, a cursed town. These are the main ingredients of Sullivan’s Sluggers, a comic written by Mark Andrew Smith and drawn by James Stoke, published in the United States by Dark Horse and brought to Italy by Saldapress (208 pages, € 19.90). A horror that makes you laugh, a scary comic cartoon, crazy at the right point and full of action.
The protagonists
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The Dragons are a baseball team made up of former professionals, mostly failed, and a young man who still has his whole life ahead and the hope of a successful career. A heterogeneous group led by Casey Sullivan, a former player who in ’76 let the ball that was worth the title for his hometown team slip away, and who still today, in bars, is forced to relive that nightmare and hunt in big fights to defend themselves from the insults of those fans who do not forget.
A cursed trip
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Now, this band of losers has only one thing left to do: take their wasted talent around the United States and challenge local amateur teams willing to pay to be able to say they’ve played against pros. In short, selling off what remains of their talent, moving on a rickety van at least as much as their lives. In one of these trips, they end up in Malice, start playing their game, but as the sun goes down, they discover that their opponents are turning into hideous monsters.
Fast-paced storytelling and drawing
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From here on the comic becomes frenetic, in the narration and in the drawing, offering the reader pure entertainment and a series of increasingly original and imaginative killings of monsters and demons, with firearms, pitchforks, circular saws, improvised Molotov cocktails and, of course, baseball bats. Until the appearance of the ghost of a priest who tells how at the roots of Malice’s curse there is a horrible story of racism.
Well characterized characters
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Although Stokoe’s action and dense and colorful plates dominate, Smith manages to demonstrate an extraordinary talent in characterizing characters who take on their own identity even with just a joke or a cartoon. Sullivan stands as the absolute protagonist, but every player, and even the driver of the minibus, plays his part. And we remain glued to the last page to understand who will survive and if the young Duncan will be able to realize the dream of a professional career, to find himself with a surprisingly moving ending. The gallery of variant covers and the cards of the characters inserted as a bonus at the end of the volume are also very funny.
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