By Zack Quaintance — Have you ever wanted a comic that was kind of like Adventure Time but for adults who tell dirty jokes in any and all settings? Well then, do I have some good news for you — Ludocrats #1 has arrived, and you’re going to love it. I don’t want to go into too many details, as this is an advanced review, but this is a book that organically weaves in the following phrases: discoverer of four new species of orgasm, rouse the pelvic weaponry, and steel-plated labia (twice). Although, it’s not a book about sex — that’s just part of it.

At its core, this new series is about a society where status is determined by ludicrousness, and where, conversely, being boring is punishable by arrest. The artwork is perfectly suited to this concept and all these ideas, presenting (like Adventure Time, to draw that reductive comparison again) at first as bright and jolly and perhaps just fine for children...before the plot proceeds to beautifully subvert any expectations of this, in the fine lineage of the last two Image Comics books to do this, Pretty Violent and I Hate Fairyland.

But whereas both of those books (with the latter ranking a cut above the former) where a bit predictable in their execution, there is nothing much predictable at all about Ludocrats, which is as its name and plot demands, perfectly ludicrous. Powered by a childlike and freeing idea engine, this book throws everything at the reader — and fast — from the first panel right on through to the finish.

It also represents something wholly new for one of its co-writers, Kieron Gillen, whose work is often just as rich in ideas, just executed in a way that feels more tightly structured, more indebted to storytelling conventions. Indeed, there’s a clarity to this book past the ludicrous veneer, but I’ve never before seen Gillen’s work so zealously embrace a sense of possibility as it does in this comic. Of course, it’s impossible to tell how much of that is owed to his co-writer Jim Rossingnol and the series artist (easily the MVP of Ludocrats #1), Jeff Stokely. Still, I found myself thinking about it when the artwork and narrative proper ended, giving way to a more polished auxiliary backmatter section that detailed the world we’d just been pulled through at great speed with clear and less ludicrous prose. 

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and — without spoiling any of them — I can say they are several individual gags and panels that have lingered specifically in my memory strongly since reading, more than entire issues of other series, and so I’m excited to see just how ludicrous this can all get as we move forward, just how imaginative and smutty and meta (look for another Image character cameo!) one comic can be.

Overall: I do not know what just happened to me but I think I might have liked it...is probably the exact right response to Ludocrats, a new comic that is — like the characters it stars — a perfectly ludicrous and not boring event. 9.0/10

Ludocrats #1 (of 5)
Writers: Kieron Gillen & Jim Rossingnol
Artist: Jeff Stokely
Colorist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $3.99
Solicit: SERIES PREMIERE! The Ludocrat! The ludicrous aristocrat! A collision of the ornate fantasy of Dune and an M-rated Asterix & Obelix! Baron Otto Von Hades and Professor Hades Zero-K are here, and they're going to save us all have a nice time.
Released Date: April 1, 2020

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.