posted 09-05-2001 04:21 PM               

Peter David has attracted a lot of attention for his work on comics such as Incredible Hulk, Aquaman and Captain Marvel, as well as his numerous Star Trek and Babylon 5 novels. Many fans have wondered what David could do playing in a sandbox of his own creation, free of the constraints that come from licensed tie-in novels and work-for-hire superhero comics. What many don't know is that David has been doing just that since 1993, in Claypool Comics' Soulsearchers and Company. This black and white supernatural team book features liberal doses of David's sense of the absurd, from puns to clever dialogue to puns to parodies to puns . . . did I mention the puns? David has said, "I'm an incorrigible punster . . . so don't incorrige me;" here he has all the encouragement he could want.

Soulsearchers has something of a sitcom sensibility; the characters are for the most part archetypes (Kelly the ditzy blond, Baraka the ladies' man, Peter the nervous accountant, and so forth) who find themselves in all sorts of wacky situations. Unlike most sitcoms, those wacky situations often involve combatting some sort of demon or otherworldly monster - Soulsearchers and Company is, after all, a struggling paranormal investigation firm - but the character interplay is what you would expect. Baraka and Bridget, the team's leader, bicker while sexual tension smolders; the firm's owner (stuck in the body of a prairie dog) complain about money; Peter tries to explain the firm's activities to an IRS auditor. I don't mean to imply that Soulsearchers is unoriginal or cliched; far from it. David and co-plotter Richard Howell are fine writers, and if this were a sitcom, it would be a very good sitcom. Because despite the archetypes, David and Howell invest the characters with enough depth to make them likable, and they aren't afraid to shake up their status quo when necessary.

There's also more than enough verbal and visual humor to keep the reader entertained. This volume contains parodies of Neil Gaiman's Sandman character and the style of the original Image comics of the early 90s, falling anvils, and puns galore. David has my undying gratitude for making a joke that points out the difference between 'imply' and 'infer' - I think that bugs me even more than people that say 'irregardless' - and the rest of the gags aren't half bad, either. There's a nice sense of pacing despite the joke-a-minute style, and the book maintains a sense of humor about itself throughout (occasionally breaking the fourth wall, or its comic equivalent, to do so.)

The black and white artwork by Amanda Conner, Jim Mooney and Steve Leialoha is very nice; it captures the sense of absurdity that's central to the Soulsearchers comic. Conner gives the characters the sort of comic timing and facial mannerisms that they need to be able to pull off not only the jokes but their reactions to the situations they encounter. And really, how can you go wrong with a book that features a warped wicked stepmother that looks suspiciously like Florence Henderson in a dominatrix getup?