3 out of 5

A charming mess or just a mess?  Well, three stars ain’t bad, but it’s a bit of a mix of both.  Thankfully, Lunita skirts by on a really oddball sense of camp – which it seems to come by honestly, as in not intended – and, yes, I’m giving it a bit of a pass due to the Amigo language barrier.

So according to Xavier Morell, Lunita and the “agency” she worked for – GEI – some kinda BPRD thing (yes, the book definitely wants to be a raunchier, wackier Hellboy) – existed in a previous comic book, but rest assured, we don’t need to have read it to get the gist of things.  …Which is true, except that Morell spends significant moments in a couple issues explaining why GEI has disbanded, without really telling us who Lunita is or what she did for the group or etcetera etcetera.  It’s rather disarming when something “we don’t need to have read” is given ample page time to explain away.  If these scenes figured into the larger whole, fine, but they don’t really have anything to do with the, uh, mermaid-tears-smuggling-operation Lunita, a werewolf, her cat, and DEA agent Summer set forth to break up.  When you’re trying to read the book as intended, with its waaaay over-the-top lesbian flirtations of Summer’s as… humorous? and the shady government-backed mermaid thing as… compelling? …the series just feels over-stuffed and all over the place.  But once I sat back and sorta soaked up the enthusiasm, I was able to appreciate the breezy vibe and the B-Movie THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR ONE SCENE antics.  I would blame the editors for the embarrassingly poor translations at points (it’s all understandable, but the language is garbled at points so as to throw off the flow – especially in book 3), but when El Torres writes a book with the same editors, it reads just fine, so I’m thinking it’s more that the editors for Amigo have always been average, just that Morell has less a grasp of American pacing than Torres.

The art starts off phenomenal via the incredibly expressive, stylized linework of Sergi San Julián.  Unfortunately, as has already happened with a couple Amigo books, they lose their artist in book 3, with Iván Sarnago taking over.  Sarnago is comparable, but whereas Sergi absolutely has his own style, Sarnago art feels closer to the faceless, simplified work you often find in Boom! kids books, where the artist has to stick to a house character style.  It’s not just characters with Sarnago vs. Sergi, though; the former drops details and backgrounds where Sergi would add some balancing touches and more effective use of shadow for depth.  The one-two punch of the decrease in art quality and choppy language almost kills things, but Morell brings it back around for a pretty fun mermaidy conclusion that’s as B-movie as it gets.

I realize if I wasn’t reading this as part of picking up all Amigo stuff, I probably wouldn’t be so kind to it.  But I’m admittedly excited for the promise of more Lunita series, as the supernatural setting and wacky cast of characters definitely have promise, especially if Xavier can step up his language game a bit (or if the new editor who steps in on book 4 – Sandra Molina – runs a tighter ship).  Even taken on it’s own, though, if you this mini through the view of it being a late-night dubbed flick, it’s the kind of thing you end up watching again and again anytime you happen to flip by and it’s on.