Creators like Geof Darrow are needed now more than ever, as comics like Shaolin Cowboy offer unadulterated commentary on the filth and debauchery of corruption and American excess. It’s been three years since Darrow wrapped his last Shaolin Cowboy miniseries, and now he’s back to deliver a suicide note. Easy enough, unless of course xenophobia and excessive greed get in the way!
It’s safe to say that if you’re familiar with Darrow’s work, you’re likely buying it largely for the art. His detailed panels and pages are like none other, cramming in jokes via signs, graffiti, and debauchery. The first two panels are focused on the side of apartment buildings, with long streaks of stains and grim all over the place, and further down, joke names for porn shops and “sexy BBQ.” You know you’re reading a Darrow comic when alligators walk the streets, and nobody is any the wiser. His rendering of American culture is the epitome of selfishness and pollution.
Once the setting of this world is established, Darrow focuses on a leaf fluttering in the wind, which leaves the city and lands on the Shaolin Cowboy. Its weight is too much for a thin branch he’s sitting cross-legged on to bear. It’s as if the cowboy can’t escape the city, but he pays no mind and easily lands on the tip of a used plastic water bottle being held by a skeleton’s fingers. Inside the water bottle is a note that kicks off his journey to find the deceased’s mother.
This world needs a cleaning!
Credit: Dark Horse
Much like in previous volumes, the cowboy goes about his business peacefully and slowly, only to encounter raging maniacs who mean him harm. In the case of this narrative, an AI rendering of an immigrant making the news looks vaguely like him, sending many to call the police to collect a reward and put him in harm’s way. This leads to a fight between the cowboy and an old pickup truck, resulting in the cowboy performing incredible flips, kicks, and ultraviolence. The art is stunning, and Darrow will leave your mouth agape with amazement.
Readers get one more fight, and it leans heavily into one involving dog poop. It’s rather gross and not very funny, unless you find poop being flung into faces hilarious. The scene does lead to the cowboy getting a friend to help him on his way from the dog who supplied the poop, so there’s at least a story function for it.
Ian Herring colors the issue to perfection, keeping the general muted color palette from previous Shaolin Cowboy stories alive. There’s something pleasing about the browns and reds of the desert where the cowboy meditates that adds a bit of peace, juxtaposed well with the grit and grime of the city.
Shaolin Cowboy: Staying A.I.Live #1 delivers exactly what longtime fans have come to expect from Geof Darrow: stunning artwork, savage satire, and bursts of ultraviolence wrapped in absurdist humor. While the story itself moves at a leisurely pace and occasionally indulges in jokes that overstay their welcome, Darrow’s singular artistic vision remains impossible to ignore. Every page rewards careful examination, and every action sequence showcases a creator operating at the peak of his abilities. In a comics landscape increasingly driven by familiarity, Shaolin Cowboy remains gloriously, defiantly strange.
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