5 out of 5

As of this writing, up to volume 4.

I have no idea where Prison Pit is going, or what the exact intention is.  I’m not sure I care.  While Mr. Ryan’s artistic skills have developed surely over the years – within his classic cartooning gag style – and have evolved a particular inking / layout style that can peg it as his work over cartoonist’s of a similar ilk, there’s always going to be the wonder in my mind of whether or not Johnny can actually draw.  I wonder this about a lot of these guys, majors and indies.  Sometimes I’m quick to snap on their style and figure that they defaulted to this or that because they can’t draw realistically, but then I scold myself for judgments – first off, chances are they did their time in life drawing or whatever and sketched their anatomies, and secondly – who cares?  Who cares if they had the steadfastness to develop a particular look because they couldn’t do it another way?  Isn’t that what creativity and artistic license are all about?  And if I like it… what does it really matter?

It doesn’t, of course.  And I only bring this up here because while we have seen Johnny slant more or less toward realism depending if he’s doing a movie poster or just his sloppy sketches, in Prison Pit he has purposefully stuck with a very angular, high-school notebook-heavy-metal-scribble look, if that follows.  Like the kind of guys a Metallica fan would draw in the margins of a spiral notebook that’s also detailed with band logos.  (Or trace on the screen of his tablet and save to a notebook app or something, I guess…)  Which totally matches the vibe of the book, which is pretty much a thankless on and ongoing story of a killer stuck on a prison planet where no one has a glimmer of anything good to their personalities.  Our lead wanders the land, running into gaggles knitted into loose gangs where they all hate each other, everyone either invincible or instantly killable, lots of penis monsters and vagina monsters and black, black blood.

As of volume 4 we seem to be at a conclusion of sorts (delivered via fucking, natch), but who knows?  Would I like this if it was just a random book on the shelf?  I have no idea.  When I picked up Prison Pit 1, I kept expecting the gore to turn into something humorous, but Ryan actually played it “straight” – just bad dudes dropping one-liners and saying “fuk” and killing each other in graphic ways.  Endless creativity in terms of the character designs, and just the endless transformations that any aspect of the land goes through when stabbed or fucked or tread upon…  This most recent book seems more in line with “classic” Johnny with some laffs trickling in, so is that part of the conclusion?  Who knows?  I don’t care.  I’d read it forever.  If you like Johnny, you’ll love it Prison Pit.  If you don’t like Johnny, go read Adrian Tomine, I don’t care.