2 out of 5

A purposefully dumb idea with purposefully dumb yuks that’s honestly pretty funny… but as part of the offness of the current Dark Horse Presents, even these little mini-works seem to be getting purposefully drafted for one shot collections, so ‘Buddy Cops’ – mismatched partner gag strip – worthy of chuckles, feels a little stunted in its growth by being limited to the 3 or 4 few pagers that are collected here.  Now maybe it’s Nate Cosby who said ‘I can only do this and no more’ and I’m just putting the blame on DH.  Maybe.  Whatever.  But the fun here would’ve been deserving of either a weekly (or issue-ly) expansion, like a Goofus and Gallant last page thing, or more awesomely a mini-series.  I realize there can’t be too much depth given to the formula – drunk future cop and by-the-books robot cop have a hate-love relationship with one another, the former downing beers and chopping up monsters with an electro sword and the latte generally getting blown to bits or purposefully disassembled by his partner – but there would certainly have been an Adventures in the Rifle Brigade silly mini somewhere out there.

To artist Evan Shaner’s credit, he really makes this shine, giving the leads and creepos a simple style that fully embodies them with characteristics without at all sacrificing background details, sort of how I wish Brian Churilla actually drew, and furthermore he’s got a great grasp of pacing for the comedy, helping to sell Nate’s frequent gags.

So that’s it.  It’s actually a good read, it just isn’t the right format for it and so comes off as a throwaway while it burps “keeper” in your ear.