The Holy Roller #1 Review

The Holy Roller #1 Review

There comes a time when you’re browsing your local comic shop trying to find a comic book about a man beating up Neo-Nazis with a bowling ball, and shockingly this week, you finally get your particular needs met. The Holy Roller #1 rolls into comic shops on Wednesday, November 22nd, published by Giant Generator/Image Comics! But will this comic be a colossal strike or a sad gutter ball? Okay…that’s my only bowling comparison.

The Holy Roller is written by Andy Samberg, who you’d recognize as one of the lizard beings behind the comedic trio “The Lonely Island,” a man who needs some form of introduction, Joe Trohman from Grammy Award-winning band Fall Out Boy and professional Speak N Spell user Rick Remender. Three writers from a wide variety of creativity are packed into a single 48-page issue of bowling ball-to-face goodness.

Our story, unfortunately, takes place in Clovel, Ohio, in 1986, where professional bowler David Cohen, dubbed “The Holy Roller,” has just won the Pizzaland bowling championship! Meanwhile, his son and hero of the story, Levi Cohen, is at the Pizzaland arcade playing Paperboy when an evil bully named Clyde comes and bullies him because he has nothing better to do. We cut straight to 20 years later, where Levi is working on a boat called Greenpeace; their job is to protect the whales from poachers; all is peaceful until he is informed that his father is dying! So Levi returns home, and….oh…it’s overrun with Neo-Nazis.

Of course, the comic couldn’t have been completed without our two artists, Roland Boschi, who can draw pictures well, and the man who colored inside the lines Moreno Dinisio. I have to tell you, the combination of Rolands’ rough cartoon-like pencils/inks with Moreno’s bright and colorful look gives this comic a completely different feel than the darkness we see later on in the title; it reminds me a lot of Chew in that regards, which is a total compliment from me as Chew is my all-time favorite comic.

Let me start by saying that the comic book market is highly over-saturated by superhero and vigilante comics, but when it comes down to it, I think The Holy Roller is a breath of fresh air; it’s punchy, absurd, and consistently over the top to the point where you will want more from this beautiful book about a man who starts hitting Neo-Nazis with a bowling ball.

While The Holy Roller thinks outside the box with its vigilant idea, the plot sometimes does come off as a little drawn out and preachy with its message. I usually give a pass with books initially because sometimes it’s necessary to convey just how bad things are in the story for our characters. The Holy Roller does this very well, and frankly, by the end, I felt rather angry about the whole situation, which made me want to smash a couple of people’s faces with a bowling ball, but I couldn’t because I had to write this review.

So, the Holy Roller is highly recommended by me. The artwork is bright and eye-catching, the story is over-the-top fun, although preachy at points, and the pacing needs to speed up in some spots. The Holy Roller team can stand tall knowing that Giant Generator/Image has a new winner for comic book fans to get excited about!