Review: Mr. Stuffins #1

REVIEW: Mr. Stuffins #1
Release Date: 29 April 2009
Writers: Andrew Cosby & Johanna Stokes
Artist: Axel Medellin Machain
Covers: David Petersen, Joe Abraham & Fellipe Martins
Colours: Andres Lozano
Letterer: Johnny Lowe
Publisher: BOOM! Studios

When a scientist finds out that the AI he’s created wasn’t for the Department of Defense like he thought, but is to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, he trashes most of his work and downloads the main program before he sets out on the lam from the people he was working for.  With the threat of being caught imminent, the scientist stashes the AI in a Mr. Stuffins bear (a mechanical bear that sings and tells stories to the children who own them).  A young boy having a rough time at home and school ends up bringing the Mr. Stuffins with a massive upgrade home, and that’s when the real fun and danger begins.

Holy crap.  This has to be, without a doubt, the best comic I’ve read from BOOM! since I started reading their comics.  Talk about hitting every awesome button there is!  Mr. Stuffins is a highly trained killer teddy bear, corrupt government peoples trying to use AI for bad purposes, and an opening scene that was straight out of Innerspace!

The writing is snappy, with witty banter being tossed back and forth between the kid (Zach) and Mr. Stuffins.  So good, in fact, that sometimes I forget that Zach is supposed to be a nine year old kid (to be fair, I’m not around a lot of nine year olds, so their conversations with talking teddy bears could potentially be this sophisticated).  The handling of the broken family and troubled school life for Zach even works here.  It makes you understand why he goes along with the fact that Mr. Stuffins has literally come to life instead of finding an old priest and a young priest to fix the bear’s issues.  Fast paced is a great way to describe it.  Usually with a first issue, it’s hard to get the reader hooked fast and hard.  Most of the time there’s just barely enough of something (the writing, pacing, art) in a first issue that makes you reserve full judgement until you’ve read a few more.  This one pretty much had me at the cover.

The art works with the story very well.  It’s not my usual taste in comic art, but the first panel with Mr. Stuffins scowling to life is priceless.  All the characters have features that are distinctly their own and you can tell them apart from each other.  Machain even does a great job with the backgrounds and settings, and that’s something I’ve noticed being left out of a lot of comics I read now.

Bottom line on this one, the comic is fun and who couldn’t use more fun in life nowadays?  Plus, if you had a Teddy Ruxpin when you were a kid like I did, this fills so many childhood fantasies of your beloved teddy bear coming to life and kicking some major ass for you.