Terminal Punks is about a punk rock band heading to their big break gig, but they get sidetracked by mutants in the airport terminal and must use their skills to save the day. This book features endearing and diverse, queer characters; references to famous punk artists and music; and an environmental message that fits the philosophy of punk. The illustrations are colorful, fun, and there's even a playlist to go along with each chapter. Although at times I was left wanting more, I am still definitely open to reading future volumes!

Note: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley. I was not compensated in any other fashion for the review and the opinions reflected below are entirely my own. Special thanks to the publisher and author for providing the copy.

it was enjoyable and a quick easy read. the illustrations were bright and vivid.
My only complaint was that I didn’t realise what the age range it was written for, it was a bit too young for me. I’m sure someone who is around 12 would enjoy it.

'Terminal Punks' by Matthew Erman with art by Shelby Criswell is a graphic novel about a struggling band of punks stuck in an airport full of monsters.

Four band members are on the way to a gig in NYC when things go haywire. A plane-load of animals comes in to contact with odd vape flavors and mutates. Now the band is caught between the ravenous monsters and a corporation looking for a cover up. Will they ever get out, and, more importantly, find a name for their band.

This was a goofy, gory ride, and I kind of liked it. The characters are interesting. The premise is fun. I liked the art style a lot.

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

Punk Rock, by it's nature, is a bit of a mess. Disorganized, cacophonous, aggressive, cynical, rebellious, raw, a bit silly, when it goes well it all adds up to something meaningful and magical. When it doesn't, it just feels like a pile of amateurish surface level discord. This punk graphic novel does some things really well - it creates characters you care about and captures the roiling emotions and anger at the state of the world of early adulthood. And my expectations were raised by the nice shoutout to Talking Heads on the cover. But the plot, the antagonists, the genetically engineered animals, the conspiracy theories, the action.....it's all a bit of a facile mess. 2.5 stars.

This is the type of graphic novel that I would have been loved as a middle schooler or teen. It's got sarcasm/humor, a bit of gore, outrageous plot points, character personality conflicts, love interests... OH AND MONSTERS. While I went into this one completely blind, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. With graphic novels, there always run's the risk of the visual art not matching the quality of the written story. Thankfully, this was not the case in this book, as the quality of the art and writing pair well together. This will not be the graphic novel for everyone. The main premise for the first volume surrounds a group of teens fighting monsters and just trying to pick a band name while managing to stay alive long enough to play their next gig. For the lovers of non-traditional stories, LGBTQIA+ representation, and punks of every age.

I won't lie, I was not immediately drawn into this story. I typically read horror graphic novels, and while this story includes a bit of gore and demented humor, it's not a book I would have picked out at the comic shop. That being said, it is a fun YA Graphic novel, that has some interesting (dare I say PUNK) commentary on society as we know it. Though I love multiple POV's, there are small sections of the story where it is not immediately clear which character's POV we're experiencing, but that is usually clear after a page.

I received a free eARC of this title through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

So, this review is going to be pretty short as I do not have much to say about it.

I thought this was an interesting title. It’s pretty campy and gruesome. A lot more blood than I was expecting. However the diversity of the characters involved in the story was nice. It’s a fun ride.

If you like punk rock and campy horror, you may like this graphic novel.

The short version: A really promising idea (essentially jumanji meets 28 days later) Gets bludgeoned to death in a text book example of how things go wrong when you tell don’t show

The long version: A bunch of mutated animals go on a murderous rampage in a locked down airport, sounds awesome right? Wrong! I apologize for the spoilers below, but I really can’t recommend anyone read this. When I read the description I was super excited to read this graphic novel, and I wasn’t even expecting anything deep or profound just a joyride through a harrowing hellscape. The joyride gets off the tracks almost immediately however. I understand this is a graphic novel and allow that exposition can be a little bit harder considering the medium, however terminal punks just info dumps everything without any nuance. At the same time the info dumping doesn’t really explain much of anything. The set up is that there is a rich man transporting animals and he doesn’t care what anybody thinks or anybody wants to know about it, but I still don’t understand exactly how the animals were transformed into their mutant varieties. I also don’t know the why or if it was just an accident.

The story is told through shifting POVs which allows basically no character development, so every character just says every single one of their feelings every single second. I’m so anxious. I’m misunderstood because I put up this hard exterior, but I’m really someone else underneath. On top of that, all of the people in the band are secretly in love with each other. The dialogue is clunky and doesn’t feel like what real humans would say, and there’s no subtext anywhere within the novel whatsoever.

Then there are the gaping plot holes. So the band, wins a battle of the bands even though their band has no name. OK, that might be a little bit nitpicky of me, but I don’t really think that would happen in real life. Putting that aside, the band is on a packed flight. When they get to the airport, all of a sudden they’re the only four people in the airport. Their luggage hasn’t been sent down the chute, every employee inside the airport is basically gone. What happened to the rest of the passengers? Then, worst of all they ultimately fight off some of these monsters. They go toe to toe with genetically modified monsters, with no real weapons to speak of, and come out with just a few scratches. I’m sorry, but I got into a knife fight with an ordinary panther, I’m pretty sure I’d get ripped to shreds before I did any kind of serious damage to the panther.

Then, on top of all of that, we have the WTF moments. The mayor of New York kills himself, just because I guess. The billionaire owner of the company that owned the animals strip down naked and starts running through the park. The behaviors make no sense whatsoever.

Still, I wanna give credit where it’s due. The artwork in the novel is pretty good. The only problem I have with the artwork is the band is supposed to be a group of teenagers, but they look about the same as all the adults. Otherwise this is well drawn, and the renderings of the animals are fun.

Overall I’d say 1.5 stars, mainly because of the artwork.

Component Ratings
Idea/Concept: 4.5 out of 5
Artwork: 4 out of 5
Dialogue: 0 out of 5
Plot: 1 out of 5
Theme; 2 out of 5
Ending: 1 out of 5

As an elder punk, this was more a bunch of kids that dug into their Gen x parents that said 'oh yeah I was big into punk into my day' old LPS and the records consisted of Nirvana and Green Day. The kids were fully fleshed out spunky and fairly fun to be around, wouldn't call them punks that would've crashed at my house in the day, but I digress. The plot is batty though. It goes from zero to 99 quickly and you're not entirely certain what's going on. It's not bad, but I wasn't sure if I was having a good time or not. Definitely for a younger crowd and not my disenfranchised 35 yr old self. Would recommend to a 15 yr old that was getting into Hellboy and Nirvana though.

A dystopian manic mayhem visual book, with occasional violence. Recommended for teens and older readers -- the vivid, eye-catching art is a real selling point.

The story goes for ridiculous, sort of what would happen the Scooby-Doo team became disaffected punk rockers and were stuck in an airport with mutants. Basically, Scooby-Doo the Nirvana version with some gore added. Although this sounds like a fun concept and there are times when it's snarky and clever, most of the time it was too cynical and juvenile for my taste.

🤘Terminal Punks 🤘
Don't read this book if you're expecting complicated and realistic world-building and scientific explanations. Absolutely do read it if you want to see some punk kids fight mutated killer animals with vape flavour names in an airport.
The graphic novel has excellent dark humour, trans and genderqueer characters, cute romantic sub-plots that actually make sense, lots of punk rock and really cool illustrations. And mutated killer animals, of course.

Terminal punks is a graphic novel about four teenagers in a punk band with no name. They have recently won a battle of the bands competition and are en route to the big stage in New York City. As they arrive at the airport another plane crashes carrying a menagerie of mutant animals. The band is trying to survive and escape while many different factions of Government and the underbelly are trying to cover up what is really going on. An amusing and interesting read.

Awkward. Four teenagers who haven't even been told punk music died in the '70s head to New York to prove a battle of the bands win wasn't the end of their career in music. They land at Idlewild just in time for the plane directly behind them to crashland, for the exotic animals on board have mutated into monsters and killed everyone. Cue a select few people, our young throwbacks included, stuck in the terminal with the death-dealing, body-ripping beasties.

What this wants is to have some of the gonzo, low-budget, drive-in feel, especially when the enlarged monkey thing starts doing his decapitating. You can easily imagine this as a sub-70 minute, one-set movie, shot and edited in a fortnight with Roger Corman's name on it somewhere and featuring some never-heard-of-again four-piece. What it actually is, however, is a hot mess. It forgets to make the kids likeable; it tries to have some Trump-styled hubris in the animal owner but still seems to mismanage that as a theme; and it has just the worst, most irritating and annoying, second-person monologuing out. Each person's internal thought bubbles are given a different colour, and a flash of an ident to begin with (someone's instrument, the shape of their specs, etc), but it's the way these are written in such an utterly unrealistic manner regardless of who they're written for, that really made it a turn-off. There is just about enough quippage here, and some dramatically novel scenes (unrequited lovers riding bucking bronco on the back of a mutated elephant in an airport, anyone?), but when so much of the script seems to be Basil Exposition writing the thoughts of people he cannot understand in a third language he hardly speaks, it's rather hard to like.