I’m normally quite vocal about the timeliness of new issues. (To the point of being annoying — I get it.) And while any delays are a bad sign for a book (and another point against the direct market system, maybe?), that seems especially apt for Toxic Avenger Comics.
Because in a storyline called “Toxie Goes to Washington,” being on time really is in the best interests of creators Matt Bors and Fred Harper. The two months between Toxic Avenger Comics #8 and Toxic Avenger Comics #9 have been a long and agonizing lifetime in American politics, and while their satire has remained cutting for its more systemic focus/spin, reality could just as easily outpace fiction. And if that happened, Toxie’s best turn in some while might sadly become filibust-ed.
Luckily, the penultimate issue of the arc is one of the better issues of Toxic Avenger Comics (and certainly near the top for the whole recent “Toxie-verse”).
Courtesy of AHOY Comics.
ICYMI: Toxie and Yvonne headed to D.C. try and get the Clean Act signed into law. What they ended up was stumbling into was a major conspiracy involving VP Shannon Karns (who may have been a former Nazi-scientist-turned-robot in disguise), the Smogulans, and the untrustworthy Senator Greene killing the president and blaming our mutant hero. And there was also Doctor Planet (a former scientist mutated himself) and the Planet Teens basically making everything so much worse. So, your typical D.C. quagmire, really.
Mostly, though, there was some Grade A satire from Bors. Everything about this story — the disenfranchised youth being recruited under a false pretense; the nefarious private mogul-turned-politician; the continued Smogulan influence that reads like the Trump playbook; etc. — was this cuttingly relevant effort by Bors to really dissect our singular moment in time. He managed to cut through so much real-world noise to capture the insanity, absurdity, and general fecklessness of right now, balancing heart and humor in a way so all of that really resonated. Bors is a master satirist, and so much of this arc’s ability to capture actual history unfolding in real-time emanates from his sharp wit and deep sense of humor.
Courtesy of AHOY Comics.
In Toxic Avenger Comics #9, he continues to up his game in some major ways. Without revealing too much, he absolutely captures a couple major sentiments: 1) this pervasive awareness of what’s wrong socially and politically, and this incessant need to double down regardless; and 2) our pointless dedication to systems that got us here in the first place. And the issue has a few paths/devices to explore these tent-poles, each with a generally impressive levels of overall effectiveness.
In the most “basic” sense, it’s Harper’s art (who is joined by colorist Lee Loughridge). The aesthetic maintained by Harper across this book has been such an integral way of keeping the Toxie spirit alive (even with breaks and whatnot), and no one gets the mix of gross, peculiar, and depressive quite like Harper. (I 1,000% adore Tristan Wright’s work in Toxic Crusaders, but that title certainly adds a sheen of overt bubbliness and joy to the proceedings.) Whether he’s showing someone exploding from a ray gun, or the squirrely face of some senator, Harper knows how to immerse us in Toxie’s singular world in a way that it all feels like some wonderful combination of sad, gross, exciting, and, most of all, viscerally resonant.
Courtesy of AHOY Comics.
And as it should — the D.C. of Toxic Avenger Comics has to check so many boxes in so many ways. It has to feel real enough for the themes to truly stand out but also bizarre enough to make us feel appropriately grossed out. It’s sort of like the idea behind liminal spaces: We know it just enough for it to affect us, but not enough that we can’t maintain an important sense of unknowing/uncertainty. (And that resulting in-between is where big emotional processing happens.) The whole experience feels deeply personal, as if Harper and Loughridge know the world and their readers enough to really twist our brains with a fork. It’s a massively personalized expression that counters all of this socio-political dissection in the absolute best way possible.
That personal sensibility also continues elsewhere across Toxic Avenger Comics #9. In the past, each issue opened with some backstory; issue #8’s work with Doctor Planet was a great way to add sympathy to a “villain” (without making the bad doctor feel too relatable). This time around, its the Karns, and we see the relationship origins of both the new president and his wife/VP. What they have is…oddly beautiful? I mean, it’s disgusting as heck, but also endearing, a relationship of two people with mutually aligned goals. (Sort of reminds you of the stories around the Clintons, and I assume that’s an overt bit of messaging). Again, it wasn’t enough to make them sympathetic; rather, it grounds the nefarious nature in the very real, very human. That whatever they are (and their roles/identities are more clear by issue’s end), we can’t deny them — they’re as organic as “super bananas.”
Courtesy of AHOY Comics.
And things becoming abundantly, sometimes painfully real is very much another essential thread across Toxic Avenger Comics #9. Not only are the Karns’ whole “thing” made more clear — and their roles are shifted and elevated in some intriguing ways — but there’s similar turns for other characters. That includes Doctor Planet and at least one Planet Teen, who are realized here to also feel sympathetic without mitigating their formerly villainous tendencies. That move not only sets the stage for some interesting new dynamics with/for Toxie, but it lends a bit of hope that our shared decency isn’t totally dead, and you can’t have satire without at least one ray of sunshine.
Toxie himself also experiences a bit of a “change.” Don’t expect him to be any less of the punk rock warrior than he is already, but our lead certainly sees some of the foolishness of his Washington mission. It’s just enough growth to mirror our own development as a populace in recent years, and a recognition that if we are going to flourish, we can’t just rely on old systems. It’s also the right speed for this book, and if the story does grow and develop, it often happens with nuance and subtly. Yes, there were big turns and whatnot across this issue, but the book never does so much to overwhelm us. If it moves fast in some areas, it moves slow in others, and what we get is a story that feels empowering without feeling unrealistic.
Courtesy of AHOY Comics.
I mean, yeah, there’s gnarly monsters everywhere, but this book’s too dedicated to its massively grounded messaging to ever go that far overboard. Perhaps the biggest reveal of this issue has to do with Senator Greene, and even if that basically involves a biopunk spin on Terminator (more primo design work from Harper and Loughridge, truly), what lands about that moment isn’t the body horror wonders. No, it’s the emotions, and how we feel now and what we’ll to do live with this latest event that our brains likely aren’t prepared to handle. It’s the kind of moment that shows us that hope might be dead before seconds later showing is its undead corpse remains as ornery and punch-drunk as ever. Or, if hope is dead, then we’re not just yet.
You know, the kind of message that we need right now in 2026 — a reminder that so much is lost but so much is still available to us. It just means ripping off old skin, setting up new expectations and targets of our rage, and executing our grand resurgence with bloody teeth and the shiny armor of community. Time will tell if Toxie can make good on his work to really change the system, or if this trip will be his final vacation ever. (There’s a sort of continuous visual device that tracks this “metric” across the issue, and it’s one of my favorite accomplishments across this jam-packed book.) But even if D.C. does win, the work of Toxic Avenger Comics has given us more than enough joy, power, and courage for our own fight.
And with issue #10 slated for a timely-ish July 22, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday than with the most modern American comic book going today.
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