Detective Sergeant James Sargent (hoho geddit…) is begrudgingly retiring from the police. Worse, his estranged son Michael and his family are coming to visit for the retirement party. But Jim has other plans. A decades-old case haunts him and he’s determined to find justice for the dead before he hands in his badge…
Joe Kelly and Ken Niimura made a superb comic years ago called I Kill Giants so it sounded like good news that the two were reuniting for another project - maybe lightning would strike twice? - and then I read Immortal Sergeant. Oh. Poo. Yeah, it’s… not good.
I’m guessing Joe Kelly’s a big Rick and Morty fan because Jim and Michael are basically those characters - Jim even looks like Rick and you can all but hear Morty’s whiny voice coming out of Michael. The book isn’t nearly as inventive or funny as that show though.
Jim and Michael have a difficult relationship so of course they end up on a father-son road trip. Gee, I wonder if Jim will come to appreciate the value of his son’s gaming app work and learn something about the revenge he’s been holding onto for years? And I wonder if Michael will learn to stand up to his dad? Yeesh, it’s so predictably trite.
Ken Niimura’s art has always been loose but, wow, it’s a whole new level of that here. It’s similar to the style in his most recent solo comic, Never Open It. It’s serviceable - you can easily follow along with the action and get what’s happening in a scene - but it still looks really slapdash. Some pages honestly look like thumbnails rather than the finished article.
In the late ‘90s/early ‘00s, there was this annoying trend in movies where a character would give a stupid speech at the end. I don’t know why Kelly’s decided on trotting that tired old trope out here, but we get one of those in this comic. It’s a terrible end to a terrible book.
And it’s so bloody long too! Nearly 350 pages of tedious, boring garbage. Oof. Never entertaining and always trying, Immortal Sergeant is a disappointing follow-up from this creative team.
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