3 out of 5

Gadzooks, more adventures of Art Brut, W. Maxwell Prince’s and Martín Morazzo’s crazy, psychic art crimes investigator? Though the initial series was imperfect, it was an exciting stepping stone in the creators careers, and I couldn’t wait to see how a post-Ice Cream Man version of the team would handle the property…

…And maybe I’ll still be waiting, but perhaps this is still a good sign: Art Brut is a reprinting of Electric Sublime, where the character first appeared, and which was published by IDW in 2016. The rights reverted back to our duo, and they took the opportunity to re-do the lettering and change the title (removing all save one reference to ‘Electric Sublime,’ a title Prince apparently disliked but, I dunno, I was fine with), and added some bonus stories at the end of each issue, which eventually act like a prelude.

The bonuses are fun (each are one-off art cases) but don’t add anything too revelatory, so we’re limited in re-rating this series; if you owned Electric Sublime, you don’t necessarily need these. Good Old Neon’s lettering style is a bit more “natural” alongside Prince and Morazzo in the reprint, perhaps, with better tails and some changes to emphasis, but unless that’s really your focus, besides the phrase ‘Electric Sublime’ being scrubbed, there are no huge narrative differences.

But: if this kicks off a run of Art Brut miniseries, or an ongoing… I’m more than happy to have supported the effort. And either way, these are creators I want to encourage to keep going on whatever they want to deliver.