Created by J. Michael Straczynski
“The name’s Al. Short for Allison Carter. Private investigator, specializing in the end of the world. More specifically, preventing the same.”
It’s pretty much the end of the world as we know it, unless Hollywood private eye ALLISON “APOCALYPSE AL” CARTER can put a stop to it. Mind you, what with madmen who live under bridges and can see the future, looney-tune sorcerers, techno-wizard perverts, cyberdemons, ectoviruses, dead but still nagging relatives, lunatics, undead boyfriends, world eaters, zombie cops like her buddy Mike Rose (used to be an LAPD Homicide Detective before he died), trolls, machine gun toting imps and the like standing between Al and the Book of Keys, currently in the hands of somebody who wants to use it to bring about the Apocalyse, it ain’t gonna be easy.
We’re deep into ComicLand here — Al’s simply gorgeous, of course, a feisty green-eyed beauty with long flowing Titian locks who favours skintight jeans, pink boots, snazzy red leather gloves, a gun strapped to her thigh, a half-unbuttoned shirt that offers a great view of the tops of her breasts and, for some reason, a greenish-blue trenchcoat — because in ComicLand, private eyes always wear trench coats. Yes, boys, she’s a babe, and she’s hot to trot. She boasts of a tryst with George Clooney with a knowing smile on her mug, and she actually has an encounter with an entity whom she thinks is Satan while she’s wearing — what else? — a baby doll nightie. There’s even a nice prurient up skirtshot of her long, long legs and her tiny write thong, with a sound effect beneath it: KKKKRRCCCKKKKK.
Of course. Just in case you missed it.
Gee, I wonder who the target audience is? I won’t even mention the skintight red jumpsuit or the shower scenes that come later…
There’s certainly not a lot of actual detecting going on here, but then, apparently preventing the end of the world isn’t really a “case” for Al — it’s more like an hereditary position. She inherited the job from her father, who inherited the gig from his father, who inherited the gig from his father and so on. But Al’s the first female to handle it.
The only catch? Even as she charges around LA in her little black VW Bug with the skull painted on the hood, Allison is plagued by very disturbing dreams that sh’e just a temp in a legal office.
Well, one of them is a dream. But which one?
Despite the fact I feel like a bit of a creep about it, and the grown-up, allegedly evolved part of my brain recoils at the brazen pandering to horny adolescents, I have to admit that Sid Kotian draws a pretty attractive woman, and J. Michael Straczynski scripts a fairly amusing little story, full of cheeky humour about the battle between good and evil and the end of the world as we know.
And I feel fine.
COMICS
- THE ADVENTURES OF APOCALYPSE AL
(2013, Image Comics)
4 issues
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Art by Sid Kotian, Bill Farmer
COLLECTIONS
- THE ADVENTURES OF APOCALYPSE ALÂ |Â Buy this book
(2014, Image Comics)
Collects issues 1-4.
