Chinese-American kid gets magic monkey powers because book. He’s in Gotham so Batman. Penguin - because this awful new character needs established characters to make anyone remotely interested in his awful adventures - gets possessed by a Chinese demon. Dumb fighting. Cringe YA “humour”. And so on. It’s DC’s latest embarrassment, Monkey Prince!
Gene Luen Yang’s work at DC has never been good and he continues churning out the monkey faeces he calls his work-for-hire comics with artist Bernard Chang (and thank god the creative team is also Chinese-American like the character - I don’t think I could’ve accepted it otherwise. It’s not like imagination and empathy exist within most humans or anything. No, you can only write the ethnicity you are and nothing else!)
The main character’s parents are scientist-goons who choose to work for bad guys for no reason other than contrived story, which puts them in contact with the capes and masks of whatever city they’re in - Gotham, Amnesty Bay - so recognisable characters like Batman and Robin and Aquaman get conveniently shoehorned into the story. So that’s the conceit of the series: do a four issue arc in one place, then have them move onto somewhere else with a new superhero in residence, repeat ad nauseam.
When we’re not getting generic superhero rubbish, we’re getting even worse: YA cliches. The main character’s bullied, he’s got a love interest but he’s afraid to make a move, blah blah god it’s so boring blah.
So as you can tell I loved this book. Amazing comic, bursting with original, fresh ideas; I’m sold - let’s start churning out the merch and movies right now because this character’s going the distance. You’ll be hearing about the motherflippin’ (oh yeah that’s his catchphrase - “motherflippin”. YA’s so cool) Monkey Prince forever - I’m gonna go buy another ten copies of this masterpiece because nine isn’t enough!
PS. I got a lobotomy before the last paragraph. Life’s so much better noww!1
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