4 out of 5

This is one of the most insane things I’ve read recently.  And you know me (don’t you?) – I read many a’ weird and wild thing, so to jump to the lead in the ‘insane’ department is a pretty impressive thing.  …If… if that’s your goal, anyhow.

So ‘The Condiment Squad’ is about three boys (teens?  sorta’ adults?) who decide to fight street crime dressed up as condiments – mustard, mayonnaise and pickles.  Yup.  But that’s not really why the book is insane.  In fact, the core plot is actually surprisingly paced and varied.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, you have a villain with a hamburger helmet and a sensei-ish role filled by ‘MC Pants’ (M.C. Hammer’s once lead backup dancer) and a slew of oddball details like a car that’s been juiced up to run off of… a can of beans – but Pakiz doesn’t exactly take the easy route to get his leads into costume.  They foil a robbery at the deli where they all work (committed by The Cornquistador, of course), committing mad violence upon the perpetrator with condiments; Keith doesn’t leverage this into “hey let’s fight evil with mutard mayo and pickles.”  The boys are given a thank-you by the police, then treated to a history of crime boss XXX (for whom The Cornquistador works) and, upon being told that the Law is scared of taking XXX in… Keith doesn’t leverage this into ‘let’s fight evil,’ but instead has his trio give a rallying speech to the police chief, getting him back on board for the fight.  Later, MC Pants stops by and tries to turn the kids onto the hero gig… but they turn it down.  So 100 pages in, it’s clear we’re reading an origin story, which is pretty cool for what could’ve just been a straight gag strip, and it makes it actually effective (relative to the bonkers world of the book) when The Squad officially forms.  Plus, an oddly sobering ending – another splash of uniqueness to an already unique experience.

So, wait, why is the book insane?  The art, man.  The art.  Pakiz combines Kricfalusi’s “never use the same expression” rule with Jhonen Vasquez’s loose-limbed characters, minus (in terms of the latter comparison) the guilty need to point out the wackiness.  The result is like Looney Tunes cracked out to the extreme.  I’ll admit that some panels are so jumbled that it’s hard to tell whose arms, whose feet, whose whatever is flopping in the corner, but to balance this out, Pakiz mostly has a good sense of pacing and page framing such that you’re never lost as to what’s happening, just lost discerning the details.  His transitions are sometimes off – perspective changes or sudden scene / timing changes making you wonder if you skipped a page (not helped by ol’ indie publishing that omits a page here and repeats a page there) – but the occurrence of this is infrequent enough to not affect the enjoyment of the read.

It’s just really exciting stuff.  My eyeballs haven’t enjoyed scrambling over such cartoon insanity in a while, the rubbery figures inhabiting the admirable trait of looking so distinct that you can hear their words and see their flim-flammery coming to life on the page.  Also, importantly: the book is funny.  Pakiz’s jokes are timed well, and he’s not afraid of dropping in both stupid puns and the occasional gag that makes you stop and consider a double-entendre.  Insert a concluding compliment here.