A note–I don’t usually do reviews here. But this one had no other place to go, since it’s not on Goodreads or anywhere else. I also wanted to get this up before the Kickstarter for the book expires. So here it is!

I should also add that I was given a review copy of issue #1 in exchange for an honest review as part of a review exchange.

God, just look at that title. Sgt. Sasquatch: The Bigfoot of Liberty, by Glen Richardson. It’s glorious. It promises pulpy action and a story that is full of unapologetic Golden Age comic book schmalz that doesn’t take itself too seriously. And to a degree, that’s what we get with the first issue.

So, here’s the basic plot. Spoilers ahead!

A bunch of U.S. Air Force guys from central casting are flying a random German scientist and a buxom American scientist somewhere just after WWII. The crate the German scientist is carrying has a weird robot-like thing inside it, and it gets loose to cause havoc. The plane crashes, and the German guy gets into a fight with Bigfoot over an obelisk from Atlantis. One of the Air Force guys gets shot in the struggle, as does the Sasquatch. But then the Sasquatch senses the love of the Air Force guy for the buxom scientist and decides to mingle the guy’s essence with his own–creating the title character!

Yup.

So, the good. I like the action, here–it’s very fast-paced and exciting. It also feels like a nod to all of the batshit-German-discovers-lost-treasures stories that came out after WWII, up to and including the Indiana Jones movies. This is all in that vein. I also thought the art was pretty decent, if still a bit rough around the edges, and the Kickstarter page suggests that future issues will be colored. The art there looks fantastic, so I imagine it’ll just get better from here.

There are some drawbacks. First, this is an origin story, and I am frankly not too interested in origin stories. Origin stories find it necessary to cram all kinds of backstory in without showing the audience why they ought to care about the character after the origin. I looked at the other covers on the Kickstarter site–in one of them, Sgt. Sasquatch is riding a bee! I’d like to read that one a lot more. BEES.

It also took itself a little bit more seriously than I was expecting, which may be a function of having to introduce characters, build the mythos of the world, and get everyone familiar with the basic setup.

However, this is a series that has a lot of potential. Go check it out on the Kickstarter site, and hopefully we’ll see lots more of Sgt. Sasquatch in the future.