5 out of 5

Aw, everybody’s Head Loppin’ nowadays.

Not really.  I just felt compelled to write that for crap knows what reason.

And _really_ not really, because if that were true, we’d have a ton more awesome comics out there.

Head Lopper – Andrew Maclean’s super-sized adventure quarterly – is in the vein of creators like James Stokoe and Michel Fiffe: dudes (consider that a gender impartial “dude”) who love comics creating the kind of comics they love, and thankfully being awesome at it.  For Head Lopper, that means a dash of Hellboy’s shrug-it-off attitude, Stokoe’s wiseass attitude, and a visual simplicity a la Paul Grist, if Grist was magically granted awesome layout, framing and pacing skills.  The titular Lopper – Norgal – arrives as a fully formed brute, bursting into page with his giant sword and tag-along love/hate magic witch’s head, Agatha (ayup), all you really need to know about the character informed by the way he snicker-snacks off a dragon’s head without much sweat.  Based on this performance, pages later he’s conscripted by the land’s lord to dispatch the beast’s dispatcher: the sorcerer in the black bog.  That’s he’s embroiled in this quest due to some in-court double-dealings is only one element of the flavor Maclean adds to the book, which helps to flesh out the title’s mood and world and fully justify its 60-something page length as being for more than just awesome battles.  True, at the end of the day the fightin’s the thing, and all else could be considered distraction, but that Maclean weaves in these extra elements without it feeling winky, or like padding, speaks to his skills and is certainly a big component of what makes this book awesome.

The art, as with the guys name-checked above (Grist aside), is awesome.  While, on the surface, more simplistic than some of his peers, Maclean has a Mignola-esque grasp of minimalism, but cast through a wonderfully bright palette provided by Michael Spicer, with nary a corner un-colored.  Each issue also includes some fun pinups, with the last issue promising more Lopper to come.  While I’m bummed that the trade is going to include extras (because… do I buy the trade while owning the issues?), I’m undeniably stoked to have another indie guy out there able to build a fanbase doing his thing.