Pretty Violent #1 Review

Created and Drawn by: Derek Hunter

Written by: Derek Hunter & Jason Young

Colors by: Spencer Holt

Published by: Image Comics

Pretty Violent is a comic that lives up to its name as in the first 10 or so pages, you see roughly a dozen people get brutally murdered in what the creative team would make you believe is a fun, cartoony excess style violence instead of it being ground in any kind of reality. However, for something like this to truly work, you need a good story to back it up or else it is violence for violence sake. 

We are first introduced to the main character Gamma Rae, a new hero on the block, as she tries to come to the aid of what she believes is a fellow hero. From there, everything, and I mean everything goes wrong. Superheroes not knowing other superheroes and them getting into a fight is a trope as old as the medium and here, Hunter & Young take it to the extreme as Gamma Rae not only helps the bad guy mistakenly, but it leads to the aforementioned brutal murders for the first half of the comic. 

And that is pretty much where the comic lost me. I am not one to be averse to brutal violence in comics, even brutal violence done for laughs, however, Pretty Violent, for me at least, thinks its funny in its execution, but it falls flat really quickly. None of the characters, main or background, make any sense in their actions and once I realized that, I knew this comic wasn’t for me. 

The one redeeming factor of the comic is that the artwork by Hunter and colors by Holt are excellent. The comic is bright, colorful and well executed throughout. It’s just too bad that the overall story is lacking. 

There’s a backup comic that I enjoyed more than the main storyline, but it wasn’t much better as it relied on the exact same excessive violence. 

All in all, this comic feels like it is aiming at the absolute lowest common denominator of the comic book buying public. If you enjoy poop jokes and violence for violence sake, this comic is for you. Otherwise, you should skip this comic entirely.