If you’ve somehow managed not to encounter Professor Elemental, (get your bottom over to youtube right now!) he’s a steampunk wonder. Adventurer, scientist, exotic dancer, Professor Elemental is the pioneer of Chap Hop music, which can best be described as not being at all like anything else.
And now he’s got a comic.
We’ve read it, repeatedly, and also tested it rigorously on a child. Our conclusions are as follows…
If you’ve not been initiated into the ways of the professor, this is a most excellent introduction, including what are probably the key points you need to know (such as who Geoffrey is) and plenty of amusement for those already wise in the ways. After a giggle inducing introduction from the man himself, we get a number of short stories, written by Christopher Mole and comicified by various others. One of them depicts a Professor Elemental song. In terms of the visuals, we’d like to mention the serious gorgeousness of James Feist’s artwork and the inspired cover by Michael Hawthorne. The cover is absolutely worthy of being a print, and if we had any actual walls, we’d very much like to hang it on one of them. That’s going to be a pair of hard acts to follow.
With a little luck and a fair wind, we shall be contributing to comic the second later this year. What we have in mind is a fair bit darker than the content of this issue. This one absolutely nails the light side of the professor, but, being us, we’re very much drawn to the darker and more demented undertones in some of his songs and are looking forward to… not so much lowering the tone, as troubling it.
Highly recommended.