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Published by: Oni Press
Released on: Sept 10, 2014
Writer: Rick Geary
Artist: James Callahan
Cover: James Callahan
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Nathan T. Rex has had his share of success in the movie biz, being a B-movie producer. His last output, “Cosmosâ€, was a box office bomb that cost a lot of money to make and made him a black sheep amongst the cutthroat community that is Tinsel Town. Depressed, stressed, drunk, and looking like the Unabomber he finds his way to “The Oracle†Zaul Pear, a wheel-chair bound old man on oxygen with Hollywood power it would seem. The Oracle keys him in on the wonders of Dr. Love, what Rex calls his “charlatan guruâ€, whose treatment involves hallucinogens.
Currently, Rex is in the middle of production oh his latest drek “President's Dayâ€, and his acid trip with Dr. Love showed him the key to the film's success: an axe-wielding Abraham Lincoln has to be the masked maniac who's killing all the teens. Brilliant. He meets some friction with the director, however, and splits the scene in a panic. Later, when meeting with his boss, he's instructed to do as he's told and keep the movie on time and on budget. Pissed, Rex vows to use his own money to make the movie he wants to make and seeks counsel after the meeting in a jiggle joint with a sexy nun stripper. Dr. Love shows up, sends him on another trip by having him sniff glue, and Rex has another vision and another epiphany.
After his drug-induced revelation, Rex makes some modifications to his latest crapfest. One of these modifications is the talent he is trying to acquire to be a consultant on the film in order to bring homicidal realism and legitimacy to the flick. That consultant: an incarcerated serial killer named Darwin. The one problem Rex faces is that Darwin isn't going to be allowed to just walk out of prison, but that doesn't worry someone as narcissistic and certifiable as Nathan T. Rex. His plan? Become an overnight lawyer and appeal the fuck out of Darwin's conviction. His argument? We're all animals, and animals need predators to weed out the weak. Darwin is that predator and he makes society stronger as a whole. If that doesn't win over the jury, maybe he'll just bribe them for Darwin's freedom. Either way, he don't give fuck all, so long as he gets his Hell-sent consultant.
After Rex buys the freedom of Darwin, Rex is faced with a new roadblock in his horror movie destined to change the face of horror. He's got his real-life serial killer to consult on his picture, but now he needs the perfect set of tits for an upcoming scene. The woman he hires is reluctant to let the puppies swing in the breeze, and his attempts at getting Madam Coconut to do it, a Pam Grier-type woman he sees around the movie lot, were futile. He talks to the set of boobs he originally hired, and she's reluctant to expose herself as she's a serious actor. So Rex does what any good producer does: he clears the set and he gets naked too.
Once his amazingly un-impressive manhood is marveled by all, he gets behind the camera and starts filming the scene: a woman is looking to purchase a car from Abe Lincoln on President's Day and Abe has a really good deal for her. He's slashing the prices and the customers and her fate lies at the business end of an axe. Darwin's consultation makes things a little too real for Rex and he loses it, seeking counsel from his drug guru and goes on another bad trip. The bad trip is full of sharks, ghosts, a cartoon rabbit, and some talking barf. And the bad trip helps him to realize just what he's unleashed onto the public. He done fucked up.
Darwin is on the loose thanks to the action of one Nathan T. Rex and now the producer is an accessory to a murder that he caught on camera. His boss sees the footage and thinks it's so incredibly life-like and amazing, and loves it. Normally such high praise would please the weasel director, but not so. He is so terrified of being discovered that accolades fall on deaf ears. Rex wants that evidence gone and decides to make President's Day a love story instead, in the hopes of saving his soul. The police are watching him too, so there's that to deal with.
Still infatuated with the voluptuous Coconut, he uses lines from the newly revised romantic movie script to try and win her over, and FINALLY gets her to crack a little, getting her to come down to the set and see the big FX pyrotechnic shot the next day. In his usual frantic fashion, he gets a little carried away with the magnitude of the explosion and that causes problems on an even larger scale than his releasing a homicidal brute back into society. Nathan T. Rex is one of the dumbest people on the planet it would seem.
With the movie wrapped, editing done, and the premiere date set, shitty movie maker Nathan T. Rex is on the way to Las Vegas to introduce the world to the love story “President's Dayâ€. With Darwin, Coconut, Rex's drug guru Dr. Love, and The Oracle, Rex drives his convertible, surrounded by bats a la Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to the city of secrets and sin. Once there, the celebration starts. The guru pulls out something for them all to try: psychotropic and necrotoxic spider venom of his own design. The side effects include mild asphyxiation and boners that might kill the user. Sounds good! Hope guru didn't fuck it up.
Things get really messy when things start to ooze and The Chuck Barf makes his debut. What is The Chuck Barf? Can't tell you. All kinds of disgusting things happen to the group, including Rex fucking up major with his blossoming relationship with Coconut. But they make it to the premier on time without Coconut, as does the skeletal ghost of Andy Warhol. The crowd reaction to Rex's piece of shit movie is exactly what you would expect if you were paying attention to the previous four issues. But to the producer's surprise, someone in the audience is pleased with the images on the silver screen; for Rex the movie is a success because it.
The team of Rick Spears and James Callahan creates a comic book worth talking about. Rex is an awful person, sleazy as can be, and has shades of Ed Wood as part of his personality. That can't be coincidence. Spears accomplishes a feat not often managed in a comic book, at least with this reader: laugh (or snicker) out loud moments. Yeah comics can have some humorous moments, but Spear's Nathan T. Rex says some hilarious things. His characterization of the man makes the reader want more shenanigans from the loveable idiot.
James Callahan's art on this book is at a high level, providing all kinds of nasty goodness. And the way he draws Nathan T. Rex makes the character all the more silly and sleazy, which helps to successfully enhance the humor already in the script by the maniacal manner in which he illustrates the book. The way he draws facial expressions and even body language accentuates the personalities so you really get a sense of how these people are supposed to be. And he draws some vile stuff, like a flashback murder of the crime that got Darwin caught and thrown in prison. It's simply brutal. The drug-induced visions Rex has throughout the book are some of the best visual pieces on these pages, with some wonderfully sickening things to look at. And Callahan has some help with bringing his illustrations to their full beauty, and that is the coloring contributions of Luigi Anderson's. He helps make Callahan's art really pop and completes in making the book as visually attractive as it is and pumps up the level of fantastic-ness to a higher level.
The back of the book has a cover gallery, which includes the “premature†release variant cover and the regular release variant cover from issue #1, on top of the five covers from Callahan that made up the mini-series. Also, fake movie poster art from the previous movies of Nathan T. Rex are here for some extra enjoyment like Death Fist, Zombie High, and The Ten Commandments 2. One last extra is a biography on the three who put the book out. And…an announcement of a regular monthly series! YES!!
The combo of Spears and Callahan has resulted in one of the best mini-series of the year that from start to finish delivers exactly what it promises in the first few pages of issue one. It's a riot page after page, and Nathan T. Rex has become one of this reader's favorite comic book characters in a long, long time. The sleaze, the ultra-violence, the crudeness, and the humor are in perfect combination here, and this is comic book creativity at its finest. This book is whole-heartedly recommended, no REQUIRED, for anyone who digs the off-the-beaten-path and comics that push the envelope of good taste. The tale is consistently funny, perfectly sleazy, and a total blast to read. This is high entertainment on so many levels and deserves to be on every serious comic book reader's list.
