I quit a lot of things when I was a lad. Soccer. Wrestling. Tee ball. If it wasn’t a video game or a cartoon, it couldn’t hold my interest. I don’t say that with any sort of pride; it’s simply a fact about myself I’ve accepted. My parents tried, and adult me appreciates that.
One of the other things I quit was Cub Scouts, the junior arm of the Boy Scouts. Made it to Webelos and decided it was time to retire.
Reading Scout’s Honor #1, by David Pepose (The O.Z.), Luca Casalanguida (Lost Soldiers), Matt Milla and Carlos Mangual, I see now that was a mistake. Had I stuck around, I could have learned how to survive a nuclear holocaust, kill and skin a wild boar, hotwire a car and generally thrive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
I could have had so many merit badges.
Alas.
Writer Pepose has made his bones taking simple premises (Calvin & Hobbes as hard-boiled noir, wedding heist, Oz as a destabilized postwar hellscape) and plumbing them for compelling character studies. Here, we’re introduced to Kit, a high-achieving Ranger Scout navigating the Colorado badlands. In the world of Scout’s Honor, Scouting is quite literally a religion, its bible the Scout’s handbook and its seven laws, passed down through the generations by the organization’s founder, Jefferson Hancock. Kit strives harder than most, including Kit’s best friend Dez, the Scoutmaster’s son, to live out the ideals of the seven laws, and Kit has the badges to show for it.
But Kit has a secret. Actually, by book’s end, Kit has two secrets. Pepose goes full Shyamalan, giving us two big twists that set the stage for the book moving forward. Kit will be forced to question everything about the Scouts, and it will cost Kit dearly.
Casalanguida draws a world just a couple shades removed from Mad Max: Fury Road, full of all manner of colorfully dressed psychos, and one woman who may or may not indicate a Handmaid’s Tale-like fate for that half of the population. Come to think of it, where are all the women in this world? We should probably find that out at some point. Be weird if we didn’t.
Nevertheless, Casalanguida gets off some fun action scenes, the kind that lull you into thinking the future doesn’t seem so bad; fighting off giant, irradiated Pumbaas actually looks kind of fun. Then, BAM, you’re unsettled by the call-and-response nature of the Scouts’ dinner, as a sea of children recite the seven laws for a Scoutmaster who looks more like Jesus than Alec Baldwin in that Canteen Boy SNL sketch from 30 years ago.
To earn its $4.99 first-issue price tag, the book includes as backmatter a guide to the Ranger Scouts’ merit badges, for achievement in fields such as wilderness survival, marksmanship, tactical driving, explosives, underwater infiltration and switchblade. Y’know, typical boy stuff!
Landing a title at AfterShock is a golden opportunity for Pepose to show a larger audience what he’s made of, after years of publishing through smaller press. So far, it doesn’t appear he’s squandered it.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
