Maybe I was wrong about The Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre?
I initially started to assume as such when issue #2 felt a little lackluster. And that was because the story (a cop and a federal agent have to survive a theme park overrun by cocaine-addled hippos to capture their drug-running owner) doubled down on all the wrong ways. The satire of Reaganism felt a little too overbearing; the reliance on key storytelling devices (i.e., henchmen phoning in their forthcoming deaths) was really pummeling a dead horse); and our leads (Sencoza and Nebraska) felt lost in the shuffle.
But now I believe I’m wrong for entirely other reasons, and I just don’t know how to feel.
Yes, the saga of Sencoza and Nebraska still feels rather stymied. The duo basically only got the last quarter or so of the issue to make it to some storm pipe in pursuit of the park’s owner, Discau. And even with some prime action shots — once more, artist James Edward Clark not only has endless style but these fights exude a depth and tangibility that’s vital texture for a story as specific as Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre — it just didn’t feel like enough.
Courtesy of Mad Cave Studios.
Maybe because the story itself ain’t exactly the most well thought out or developed. Given the rather “basic” narrative arc to be found, the book has to stymie the characters’ momentum in order to keep the story going for a few more issues. And, sure, I’m down with any book exuding that kind of intelligence when recognizing its shortcomings and trying to make the most of a story.
But as I found in issue #1, an important draw of Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre was the tension between our leads. It’s not exactly revelatory stuff, but two unlikely leads coming together to beat up bad guys is quintessential action movie canon. It’s as if we all know what this book is, but someone else decided that wasn’t enough after they’d already collected everyone’s white hot cash.
The fact that we can’t get more of this purer action (and that, as I mentioned, these displays feel so compelling in the scope and aesthetic of this world) proves to be deeply disappointing. I picked up a book called Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre because of the insanity I assumed would dominate the book; instead, it’s busier than it needs to be, and seems distracted from what its mission ought to be. And, folks, that’s battling drugged out hippos amid a hurricane.
The fact that this story has to, for instance, lean into the same devices and foster the same repetitive nature makes me think that the creators may not actually be sure of this book’s true nature. Or, perhaps they don’t want it to be what it has to be, and want it to be something else entirely. Either way, we the reader feel lost in the shuffle, and I can see what works even if we can’t seem to fully access that in the actual story.
Courtesy of Mad Cave Studios.
Which, again, that tension is a big draw of Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre. Not only between the characters, but also how this big, dumb book is an action star’s face atop the brain of some zany political scientist. That we can come for, say, a man being beheaded by a storm drain and still have this thoughtful exploration of the War on Drugs and the social and political quagmire that’s led us to in 2026. And there’s some of that here in Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre #3 — the intros from our Bargain Bin Nancy Reagan, for instance, continue to be slices of pure brilliance.
Here, writer Fred Kennedy absolutely nails the satire with surgical precision, showing us the greed, violence, and selfishness at the core of people who decided to play authoritarian narcs, and how that same energy informs life right now (and how these people have made us suffer by unleashing the metaphorical kind of cocaine-addled hippos — God, I hope they’re just hypothetical). That satire diffuses across the rest of the story to varying degrees, and the book is complicated in that way without feeling inaccessible.
Only with issue #3, some of that focus feels decidedly off. Instead, we get a lot of insight into Discau, and the slightly pie-in-the-sky mentality he had in starting the park. The focus, then, is that he clearly lost his way, and the issue seems to suggest that he wanted to make the world better before ultimately becoming a guy who weaponizes large semi-aquatic animals.
There’s a couple bright spots with this “revelation.” One is that Kennedy’s writing is sharper than ever, and he dissects our current political moment and discusses ideas of social and political revolution with a brevity and power. And I’m also the guy who absolutely loves any instance where villains are made to feel more sympathetic — recognizing your evil-doer as being human makes all of us ask big, hard questions about our own life (which seems to fit with the “turn” of this issue).
Courtesy of Mad Cave Studios.
Only, I’m not entirely buying all of it. By choosing this specific time period, and using action movies as this specific enough lens, it felt like the creators were trying to get at some direct enough messaging. (That would be, “The root of it all lies in this moment where America split from its reality into some dopey fantasy.”) It was a dissection of these morally-lacking jerkweeds trying to play like they were superior, and that they got to be the ones to alter the America over the last 50 years.
Only when push came to shove, they’d eventually abandon it all amid a storm of social decay and environmental devastation to save themselves (and leave the rest of us to be eaten). As such, to add sympathy to Discau manages to 1) remove the action movie villain sheen that makes the messaging here easier to swallow (and more culturally resonant) and 2) undercut the specific political dissection established in the debut issue (ergo, these people are dubious monsters interested in only themselves).
And Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre takes it another step further by making moves and suggestions that could bring our nasty narrator into the rest of the story (beginning in issue #4, likely). And that move does have some potential, but it’s also shaped my understanding of the book going forward. Now I can totally see Discau learning his lesson, or somehow saving the day from our awful Reaganite stand-ins. Perhaps he might somehow become “reborn” and be allowed to make good on the promise of his utopian ideal that simply went astray.
And even if I’m absolutely wrong, this upcoming confrontation feels like it has little to do with the actual characters genuinely struggling in the story as well as this book’s existing identity. It’s a novel, slightly meta shift, but one that feels like it’s yet another over-complication. This book already has an identity — an overblown action movie as this modern political parable — and it’s drowning amid the leaves and hippo poop to fight that fate.
Courtesy of Mad Cave Studios.
This issue of Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre didn’t feel like a book scrambling to keep its tone and vibes running — rather, it felt like a book pivoting at the last second in a way that left its readers, characters, themes, and general cohesiveness and consistency convulsing in the dust.
It also felt like there were more layers to discover about this book, but nothing that made proper sense with what had come before. And I get that it’s not my story to tell, but when a thing starts one way and makes a change that feels unearned at worst and half-cocked at best, then I feel somehow a part of this.
I’ve really wanted to like Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre in some sturdy, meaningful way. But the last two issues have seen the book and its creators double down in all the wrong ways, mitigate what does actually work, and go toward story destinations that are some combination of weird and uninteresting (at least in their current iteration).
Maybe I was wrong about this book, and I think that really, truly sucks.
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