Creative cartooning with social satirical messaging is back this week with Monkey Meat: The Summer Batch #1. Juni Ba showed us just how innovative he is in the comics form with his five-issue miniseries Monkey Meat, and now its sequel kicks things off for a new batch of commentary, crazy characters, and chaos. This time around, Ba’s anthology features even more creative endeavors like advertisements, a fun page, and two tales that will blow your mind.
From the very first page, you’ll note this is less a comic and more of a jam-packed magazine. Even the credits page is designed like a boarding pass for you, the reader. The cohesion of the anthology is aided by a letter to open the issue detailing what you’re in for, as well as an area to sign away any rights you might have as you enter the dangers of Monkey Meat Island.
The first story has no dialogue but does have a handy introduction to set things up. It is about the groundskeeper who died, but the Monkey Meat Company bought his soul and thus can put his soul back into bodies for their use. The diabolical nature of corporations is right there at the start of this tale.
The visuals are stunning and inventive.
Credit: Image
Kicking off the first tale without dialogue or captions is a bold move, and it shows how strong Ba is at telling stories visually. Cool character designs and an interesting use of red and orange act as highlights to draw the eye. Tricky things to convey, like a lack of three sacrifices when a character got one, are conveyed with clever image-only dialogue boxes. Nearly every panel is complex in its own way, telling a deeper part of the story.
A testament to Ba’s artistry in this first tale is that you won’t speed through this story simply because there isn’t dialogue. That’s often the case in comics, but here, you’re figuring out intention, emotion, and more via the images. I found myself taking in each image longer than the last, making it feel rewarding in its own right.
The second tale involves superheroes Monkeagle and Monkey-Girl, two heroes reminiscent of Batman and Robin. This story acts as a commentary on legacy superhero characters and what would happen if they came to life. Imagine waking up and discovering you have 60+ years of stories, some of which contradict, making up your life story. It’s a real head trip, man.
The hero’s existence gets far more complicated when copyright law and lawyers take over their lives. There are interesting points made that’ll make you think about legacy characters in a different way. The fact that the story ends with a fourth wall break is icing on the cake. The story may be fiction, but what if these heroes could step over the gutter of the panel and escape their corporate comic book prison?
Closing out the issue is a full-page ad revealing how culture is all put into a meat grinder for consumption and art shared by the magazine editor on globalization. Both are clever visually.
Juni Ba continues to push the boundaries of comics with Monkey Meat: The Summer Batch #1, delivering a vibrant, subversive, and wildly imaginative take on everything from corporate greed to superhero legacies. It’s a mind-melting must-read!
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