Cowboy Ninja Viking review

Writer: AJ Lieberman
Artist: Riley Rossmo
Publisher: Image

Three Kinds of Badass… Literally…

When a man tries to sell me a comic book called Cowboy Ninja Viking – about a hero who is a cowboy, a ninja, and a viking, at the same time – you might say that he is working from an advantaged position. When said comic is about a secret project by the US government to weaponise multiple personality disorder in order to create super-soldiers for the war on terror… well, I’m fairly sure my wallet was actually on the table before I was even aware of reaching for it.

Yes. Weaponised MPD. Basically, they take crazy people and train their alternate personalities to be deadly killers… or something. None of it ever really gets explained very much, because it just doesn’t matter. There’s that kind of knowing wink, as the writer says “Guys, just go with me on this one, alright? I mean, I could try to give some kind of sane explanation for how this is supposed to work, but we all know it would just be bullshit anyway and oh, hey, look, something blew up and now a cowboy ninja viking is leaping off the back of a Harrier jet!” Sure, none of it makes any sense, but you’re too busy laughing your ass off to care.

That’s “Hero” With Finger Quotes

The hero of our story is Duncan, the aforementioned cowboy ninja viking, and apparently the only real success of the ‘Triplet’ project (Triplets, because each of them has three active personalities). That is, until villainous rogue psychiatrist (now there’s a phrase you don’t get to use every day) Johann Blaq succeeds in activating the other members of the project, pitching Duncan into a battle against 13 other Triplets, each with skills comparable to his own. Well, mostly. The chef and the hair dresser are a little bit useless, but the Amish Priest has a hell of a right hook.

The whole thing basically rolls together as a thriller-slash-action-movie of shady government conspiracies, corrupt politicians, military black-ops, and people with damaged pasts. Duncan’s own history is intriguing, and there are strong hints that there’s a lot more still to tell. Being volume 1 of an ongoing series, this first book functions primarily as a setup, establishing the characters and their relationships, whilst kicking off a truly titanic conflict to come, and it does that job gloriously. Perhaps what I like most of all is that, in spite of all that, it never actually feels like a “first volume”, in that “Saving all the good stuff for later” way. It’s clear that we’ve only scratched the surface of what can be done with this concept, but even then there’s no shortage of awesomeness on display.

A Goddamn Harrier, Guys! For Seriously

This thing is a flash of rare brilliance. It’s got that kind of mad energy that makes it impossible to stop turning the pages, wondering what piece of insanity is going to float to the surface next. A rogue psychiatrist flies off in a fighter jet after thumbing his nose at the CIA. A cowboy gets beaten up by a priest. A pastry chef murders people with Le Cruset dishes. The most bad-ass psychoanalyst ever gets black bagged by the military, and then asks them for a martini.

What’s strange is that, in spite of all this, CNV feels surprisingly “low budget”… and I mean that in a good way. We’re talking low budget like Kick-Ass or District 9, where they can afford to take risks because they don’t have so much studio pressure. Sure, there’s always something exploding, or a fight scene, or someone nailing a centrefold, and the spaces between those things are littered with one liners, but it’s also really sharp. The humour is dark, the fights are nasty, and the heroes aren’t always very heroic. It’s got a griminess to it that’s surprising, and rewarding.

Then there’s the artwork, which I can’t help but love. Loose, sketchy, wild and vivid, drenched in stark shading and sudden movement. On the surface, everything feels a little imprecise, but take a moment to really consider the panel layouts and overall structure of each page, and you’ll realise how tightly everything has been laid down. Like the story itself, the panels flow effortlessly, always keeping us moving. Riley Rossmo makes deft use of detail, and it’s absence, to control the pace of the story, keeping us moving when the energy is at it’s peak, and then slowing things right back down to hold on a richly detailed establishing shot or a finely crafted close-up. Again, low budget, but in a really good way.

Well Of Course There Are Issues; It’s A Comic Book, Dumbass

There are some issues, of course. The relentless pace makes it difficult to catch everything the first time through, and I frequently found myself going back to recheck details, or get the right sense of how a sequence went. There are also some elements of the story that don’t quite hang together once you really look at them properly. Not critical plot holes, just incidental pieces that don’t fit right. By way of example, a supporting character gets offed early on in the story, and it is soon revealed that their death was all a part of the villain’s plan; except that the character was only there because the villain planned to get them killed. If not for that, the character would have been a meaningless nobody, so why bring him in just to get him killed, for no effect whatsoever? (If you’re having trouble following that, well, that’s about how it felt reading it). Who knows, perhaps some of this will be addressed in later volumes. Even if it isn’t, we’re mostly talking minor nitpicks here.

RGB Totally Sees What You Did There

All in all, it’s damn good stuff. The art really pops, the dialogue is razor sharp, and bust-a-gut funny, the characters are well drawn (in every sense), and the whole thing manages to maintain a relentless energy that’s damned hard not to love. And if nothing else, the sheer brilliance of the last panel is worth the price of admission on it’s own.