Being a former 2000AD reader when I was in high school, there's something about Alex Horley's artwork that makes me think I've seen Sharky! before even though there's a good chance I haven't. Punky-looking, over-muscled, generically handsome - he could be any number of 2000AD characters who appeared in single issues of Dredd or Slaine. But this theme of a rather derivative character and teenagers is basically what Sharky! is all about. Sharky is a high school kid who loves reading comics featuring his hero of the same name and then one day, through some weird twist of fate, is able to turn into Sharky and fight monsters. I'd talk about the plot but for the life of me I'm not sure I could recount it. When I read it the first time I wasn't sure exactly what was happening and, flicking through it now, it looks like an assortment of random scenes thrown together. The "plot" just involves a series of pastiche characters punching one another until the book runs out of pages. Oh, and zombies show up at one point. While Sharky sounds like a poor man's Shazam, he's joined by other cheap Marvel/DC knockoffs like Thor Stormhausen (Thor but female), Ravenclaw (awful Batman parody), and Blazin' Glory who is simply Captain America minus his shield. Thrown into the mix are better, more famous characters like Jim Carrey's The Mask, Savage Dragon and Vampirella, though why they're here is anyone's guess - probably to wake the reader up occasionally. "Zzz... hey, it's Vampirella! Damn, she's gone now. Back to sleep..." I say that because Dave Elliott has no idea how to make his own "creations" interesting. Sharky is just dull as a character. He's some nobody kid who can somehow turn into a demi-god who looks like he escaped the 80s gay scene only to be corralled into an incoherent comic book story. Thor is every hair metal band pinup and Blazin' Glory is a less interesting Cap who likes cigars. This is Elliott's love letter to the kind of stuff his teenage self was into, which is fine, but doesn't really work as a book, not least because unless you were into the same things, you won't find it compelling, and if you're a grown-up, teenage power fantasies are too superficial and insubstantial to hold your attention and simply aren't interesting to read. In the end Sharky! is a mish-mash of things that don't hang together well and reads even worse. Horley's art is ok at best but when he's not painting fight scenes, his regular pencil and ink stuff looks very ordinary. I'm sure this book was conceived as a fun venture but the finished product comes off as enormously contrived and tedious to read.
Published by Atomeka/Titan Comics, Sharky! Volume 1: When Titans Clash by Dave Elliott and Alex Horley is out now