A big o'l bunch of mash-up retro weirdness, fun but uneven. Prepare for lots of cheese and wink-wink-nudge-nudge references, more character driven than plot driven. Gorgeous artwork, though!

#BronzeAgeBoogie #NetGalley

DNF'd cuz this request was a bad idea. The references in this one are cheesy, cheesy, cheesy. Take everything bad about the 70s and 80s and put it in a book.

'Bronze Age Boogie: Volume One: Swords Against Dacron!' by Stuart Moore with art by Alberto Ponticelli and Giulia Brusco is a kind of loving tribute to comics and pop culture of the 1970s, for better or worse.

In a story full of Martians, talking apes, kung-fu master, we follow Brita, a sword-and-sorcery princess who finds herself sucked into a time warp and in 1975 AD. She finds companions in Jackson Li and martial arts master and Lynda Darrk, a street smart fighter. Together they try to piece things together to stop the Martians and get everyone back to their own time.

It's a pretty convoluted and weird story, which adds to the loopiness. The art is pretty decent, and I liked the character designs. What I didn't like is the constant barrage of in-jokes and winking at the reader. It wasn't really breaking the fourth wall, but it kept yanking me completely out of the story. Plus the chunks of narrative pages didn't help the story flow very well.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Ahoy Comics, Diamond Book Distributors, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

Painfully retro look back at how shit the 70s were, with a kung fu warrior straight out of bad TV, a blacksploitation heroine, and some hippy bollux about a second, overlain existence millennia ago that a lead girl character is split between. Oh, and talking, time-travelling disco monkeys. I don't mind weird if it's for a reason, but if it's weirdness for weirdness' sake I switch off. And boy did I switch off.

Bronze Age Boogie is a genre mash-up that pays tribute to the comics of the '70s. Featuring sword and sorcery, martial arts, talking animals, time travel, and loads of 1970s references (some in-your-face obvious and others a bit more nuanced).

The best description I can think of is that Bronze Age Boogie does for comics what Quentin Tarantino does for film. It pays an (at times) over-the-top homage to some great works of the past while forging a path all its own.

It's fun, sometimes silly, almost always entertaining and, like those great old comics it serves to honor, surprisingly easy to follow considering the sometimes complicated plot.

I would recommend Bronze Age Boogie to any lover of classic comics who enjoy something a bit familiar that is also kind of different. That recommendation comes with the warning that those under a certain age might not get some of the Groovy '70s humor... But those who do will love it all the more!

***Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the various authors & artists for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

The comic book Bronze Age meets the actual Bronze Age as this time travelling farce bounces back and forth between a Conan type book and the blaxploitation era of the 70's. Talking monkeys are also somehow involved. It's all very convoluted and hard to follow. I found the Conan era girl Brita, particularly ponderous as she's spouting off lines like "Don't squeeze the Charmin!" How is a girl from 4,000 years ago going to even know what this lingo means? This is before she even heads to the 70's. I like weird when it serves a purpose. Making things weird without a coherent story though is another matter.

Weirdly Entertaining

The publisher promos and reviewer blurbs for this volume are so excessive and overcooked that I was prepared to dislike the series just on principle. Well, the blurbs ARE excessive and exaggerated, but lurking behind that breathless hype is an entertaining, if uneven, effort.

Our main characters are Brita, the Barbarian Valley Girl, Jackson Li, the martial artist, Lynda Darrk, a street fighter, a bunch of Martians who speak a form of Kool Krazy Kat English, and a time traveling Ape time-paradox fixer. There's also a dryly witty Godd who shows up late in the book to monologue us over the bumpier plot points. That plot turns on the fact that every few centuries the Martians attack Earth. Early age Martian invaders can be beaten, but modern Martians are too advanced to be beaten. So we all have to travel back in time, (from 1975 A.D. to 1975 B.C.), to beat the early style Martians. As you might expect, there's lots more, but that's the basic thread.

Also as you might expect, the plot isn't the point, except to explain all the time travel and to get the Martians into the story so everyone can run around. The characters, who all come with big personalities and lots of snappy banter, are the real treat here. (That's so much the case that sometimes you'll get a still page of narrative that monologues you up to speed on what's happening.)

Brita is an angsty Barbarian Princess, but she's appealingly snarky and yet doesn't wear out her welcome. Everything pretty much revolves around her, and that's fine. Jackson Li has a full complement of Zen/existential dread, and between his philosophizing and internal conflicting, the story comes to a dead stop every time he shows up or opens his mouth. Lynda Darrk is a Foxy Brown blaxploitation character, and she has sass and skilz. The Ape is either funny or not depending on how you feel about smartmouth apes.

Lots of mash ups just try to skate by with passing references and lame shout outs, but this book has some clever bits and throwaways that are more knowing, subversive and witty than expected. There are lots of good lines from minor characters, and some of the best lines are either deadpan or slightly edgy. (Really, when you have a magic Sony Walkman, juggle a magic disco ball, missed the last chopper out of Saigon, and your Barbarian war cry is "At-Ti-Ca!!" you're doing something right.)

The art is big. But it always supports and complements the action and it never gets in the way. Just as the characters have big personalities as written they have big, expressive impact as drawn, which is sort of amazing when you think about all of the manic action that also has to be crammed onto the page.

So, as a genre mashup this worked a lot better than I expected. If you just put that aside and approach this volume as a standalone story without a 70's nostalgia component, well, this might be a little too rushed and uneven for you. I was already out of high school by the 70's so I got most of it, and I thought the project was an entertaining kick. You know, if you can dig it.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

That's comics' Bronze Age, rather than (pre)history's, though of course in Conan and his imitators the two do overlap. And this gets right in there with barbarians warring in the distant past...but the chieftain's daughter criticising his iffy grammar, and dropping suspiciously modern turns of phrase. Cut to funky mysticism and martial arts action on the mean streets of seventies New York, invaded by Killraven-style Martians. And then there are all those damn dirty apes. Soon the elements are being bounced off each other, and given I've not read much of the original material on which this is riffing, I couldn't tell you how good a job of pastiche it's doing, but it's a jolly enough romp.

(Netgalley ARC)

It's times like these I wish music could incorporate into comics somehow. I actually like the intro and it's got a lot of potential. I even get the double meaning of Bronze Age, both the historical era where the beginning and end take place, and the comic age; hence why Blaxploitation characters and a Bruce Lee clone come up. A few tropes like monologging and some stills come up that can drive people away. All things considered, this is not a very serious depiction of the subjects. If anything, it's a lot more like mashing a bunch of things together to create something epic. Unfortunately, due to the limited space and the incoherent pacing things don't turn out that great. I would like if things just focus on Brita, her anachronistic attitude and rolling with the punches of things is actually what stands out to me the most. I mean she accepts having a talking chimp around. Lynda and Li could potentially be great, if only their era of narration didn't travel with 'em. But who really knows what happens at this point?

Painfully retro look back at how shit the 70s were, with a kung fu warrior straight out of bad TV, a blacksploitation heroine, and some hippy bollux about a second, overlain existence millennia ago that a lead girl character is split between. Oh, and talking, time-travelling disco monkeys. I don't mind weird if it's for a reason, but if it's weirdness for weirdness' sake I switch off. And boy did I switch off.

Wild artwork, action, images, cool storytelling - this was a graphic novel adventure I would gladly go on again. Great visual reading!