by Jason Lees, MoreHorror.com

MISSING LINX (Dale Mettam, Courtney Huddleston, and Jason Worthington - From Viper Comics and 1821 Comics)

I love being surprised. Whether it be from a movie or a comic or just something someone says in passing. I’m one of those pompous idiots who thinks I have it all figured out. I tend to spot the ending of a book in the first chapter or think I know what someone’s going to say as soon as they open their mouth. I’m the definition of a know it all jerk.

That’s why I dug the hell out of MISSING LINX.

What we have here is your basic young reader hero fare, but instead of spandex wearing mutants, we get four incarnations of the abominable snowmen that fight the baddies. Here we have Yeti, Sasquatch, Skunk Ape, and (of course) Big Foot. They come off like a hairier Fantastic Four at times, but they’re here to save us from other beasties released from their dimension. The comic starts off as a bit of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles clone, what with its stereotype characters all being defined by their choice of slang (one mutters, one talks in street jive, one all techno jargon) but the joke gets forgotten real fast as the book gets rolling.

This is the kind of book that just screams out to be done as an animated kids series, and would be right at home alongside other Saturday morning classics. The dialogue is sharp and even supplies some laughs for older readers, especially those who dig the Big Foot legend. The action is almost second to the jokes, and never too violent.

This is the kind of book that we need to get younger readers into comics. How much longer until the readership of comics matures too far beyond the medium and there’s no one left to pick up the slack? We need books like this to get a new crop of readers into the art form. It can’t all be bullets and babes. We need fun fantasy, too.

"MISSING LINX" is a fun, fast read. Well done and, like I said, it surprised me with how good it was. It reminded me how much I miss reading comics.

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