Everyone should be forced to work in fast food. The public interactions, the bad hours, the coming home smelling like a sandwich. There’s nothing like it. The banal monotony of a Tuesday closing shift in the foot court Quiznos Subs of a dying mall where your only co-worker is a stuck-up 17-year-old who hates you for unknowable reasons (I’m not still mad at you, Keighley, I promise)? It’s close to what I imagine hell is like. That’s what we find in TRVE KVLT (pronounced true cult), the latest Kickstarter release from Scott Bryan Wilson, Liana Kangas, Gab Contreras and DC Hopkins. This compelling introduction asks, what’s a man to do after 15 years at a dead-end job?
Marty Tarantella is bored and tired. His highest ambition in life is for folks to call him Tarantula. His shifts at Burger Lord don’t even annoy him insomuch as they don’t fulfill him. He puts on an anime mask and robs a strip mall, racking up eight counts of armed robbery for $2,038.75. So now he has that to worry about. Which is great.
The plot moves briskly, setting up his life at Burger Lord, fleshing Marty out through his interaction with his manager/work-friend/only friend(?) Bernice and a prospective new hire who knows too much to be excited about flipping burgers. Wilson’s dialogue deftly replicates the monotony of a shift mixed with the inner monologue of a man who is fighting, if barely, to accept his lot in life.
The real star here though is Kangas’ art. Her characters are emotive, and their body language adds a sense of depth and dimension to their personalities. The designs for the characters tell you immediately who they are and what they care about. Marty’s trying-too-hard dirtbag mustache sells the character, as does Allison’s put-together, Midwest-hot vibe. This is all enhanced by Contreras’ impressive use of light and texture to color the feature. This team makes the boring engaging.
While it makes for a great character introduction, there is little beyond a last-page hook to keep you invested in the plot of this series moving forward. The Kickstarter promised a mix of fast food action and Satan worship. We get the first half here but hardly any of the second. For the initiated who backed this project, as engaging as the character work is, it may just feel like an expanded version of the elevator pitch.
What we’re left with is an exciting project with a massive amount of potential. For being a piece of shit, Marty is deeply relatable. You know him, you went to school with him, hell you probably worked next to him and promised you would never be him. The artistic chops on this project really shine through, and the storytelling is primed and ready to go. Let’s see if #2 can deliver on the strong opening here.
Note: Multiple ComicsXF contributors, including the writer and editor of this piece, backed TRVE KVLT on Kickstarter.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
