Lester of the Lesser Gods Review (Eric Powell, Lucky Yates)

Back in the ‘80s, Lester’s drunken slob mother hooked up with Norse God Odin and produced Lester. Now he’s fat, ungainfully employed and in his 30s - and it’s the apocalypse for no reason. So Lester decides to prove his worthiness to his deadbeat dad. Hold onto your sides - this one’s going for big yuks!

Eric Powell is yet another once-great creator now unable to produce even passably decent comics in his older years. Maybe that’s squarely on his co-writers Lucky Yates and Mac Cushing but either way Lester of the Lesser Gods was just awful.

Here’s a flavour of the kind of jokes smeared on every page to see whether you’ll enjoy this book or not:

Lester is fat and wears leather chaps and underpants. He also drives a scooter. He talks like Thor but he’s not buff like Thor. His catchphrase is “Suckle my dong” and his sword is called Razor Dong the Ass Splitter.

… yikes.

Then we’re in the realm of Kevin Smith’s brand of humour, ie. pop culture references being passed off as “jokes”. Here’s a reference to Fury Road. Here’s a reference to Thundarr the Barbarian. You know Bill Nye the Science Guy? Well the bad guy here is called something similar - Will Frye, the Technomancer Guy - for no reason.

Then we’re back to crass garbage for the sake of crass garbage, like we’re all braindead 12 year olds. There’s a monster with a hairy dick and balls. Here are some Knob Goblins waggling around their penises. There’s a place called Schit Mountain and the guy who rules it? He’s called King Schit.

Amidst this dross, there’s no real story. Lester putzes around with his sword, fighting things until he isn’t, and wraps things up by learning a feeble lesson. Gideon Kendall’s art style is closer to Sergio Aragones’, even Fred Hembeck’s, than Barry Windsor-Smith’s, which is fine because this is a “comedic” comic, but still means that it doesn’t look great.

Terry Pratchett did a better Conan parody with his Cohen the Barbarian character in the Discworld books, but then Sir Terry had actual wit unlike the creators of this worthless crap. If you think Kevin Smith, Tenacious D or Ernest Cline are a riot, you’ll probably enjoy Lester of the Lesser Comics - everyone else with the misfortune to read this comic will likely find this as wretchedly tedious as I did.