Review: The Ludocrats #1 is Not for Child Eyes

Writer: Kieron Gillen, Jim Rossignol / Artist: Jeff Stokely, Tamra Vonvillain / Image Everything about the cover of The Ludocrats #1 looks wild. The boisterous man in regal clothing with a belt buckle that reads “SPITE”. The composed woman off to his right calmly holds her martini with perfectly quaffed hair shaped like a lightning bolt. Even the tagline and first page of the comic itself portend how utterly inane this whole affair is going to be, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t having fun reading how exactly the inspired this strange, strange world.

Right off the jump, do not be fooled by the bright colors and lively expressions on the cover. This is the furthest away from a kid’s book as you could possibly get, and it gets bizarrely graphic very early on with a naked man in a blood gown. I will allow you to experience the visceral shock of actually seeing that for when you inevitably open this issue. I’m used to Gillen’s works being a little more on the adult side, having read Phonograph, The Wicked + The Divine, and Die, but I don’t think I was quite ready for how off-the-wall the latest experiment from the word scientist alongside his compatriot Rossignol would be. If the phrase ‘blood gown’ didn’t catch your eye, then certainly the phrase ‘Eldritch Hyper-Pope’ will, and the series just escalates oh so very quickly. We are essentially thrust into the world without any pretense, only knowing that there’s a wedding going on, and that Otto Von Subertan is just the most: which…