2 out of 5

It’s amusing more for the fact that it exists than its actual content, as outlandish as its trying to be.  Springing from the same odd times that had Beetlejuice as a kid’s cartoon, the Toxic Avenger turned into ‘Toxic Crusaders,’ and then Marvel put out a comic.  Initially by the Transformers team of Simon Furman and Derek Yaniger, the 8 issue series would attract some other oddballs like Hilary Barta and… Steve Gerber.  Gerb’s two issues get to indulge in some of his yuk-yuk humor – some puns a la Sludge and the general randomness that he would often fall back on, albeit pitched toward the snot and puke limned world of Toxie – and there’s actually some pretty smart wordplay that suggests he was at least having fun (or not just tossing off the assignment), so perhaps there was an affinity for Troma, who knows.  Yaniger’s pencils are actually great – nice, full panels with a good line between comic distortion and maintaining some figure consistency, setting the proper tone between fun and gross for which the book was definitely aiming, but either Yaniger had no desire to leave room for dialogue or John Constanza is pitiful at lettering, because a lot of flow is ruined by odd placement of word bubbles, causing one’s reading to jump back and forth when you realize you’ve read stuff out of order.

…Which would’ve made the jokes funnier, but we’re still stuck in state between one-shot books and storylines that require a bit too much reader investment to just “get.”  It goes without saying (apparently not) that ‘Toxic Crusaders’ should not be something you have to sit and ponder, so it’s unfortunate that the world is already a bit too cluttered by issue 3 to fully grasp the split between good guys and bad guys and bad guys and worse guys.

This probably worked best as a supplement to the cartoon if’n you were digging that.  Otherwise it really doesn’t have any lasting effect… though the art and writing have more effort put into them than one would expect.