Unimaginable (Tom Pinchuk/Kurt Belcher)

You may remember Tom Pinchuk from last year's Why Buy Hybrid Bastards!? segment. His newest OGN, Unimaginable, just hit stores this week, and is every bit as quirky and high-concept as his past efforts.

Synopsis

In Unimaginable, strange girl named Stump wakes up in a dream world where she is put to work as a Solver, someone who is tasked with solving problems of all sizes and natures. She is aided by two cooky Solver sidekicks, Lank and Chin, who insist on following the rule book when confronting each problem. Stump, on the other hand, uses her own mix of common sense and absurd logic to overcome the obstacles she faces. Behind all of these problems are the Unimaginables, creatures so terrifying and powerful that no one can even imagine who, what, when, where, why, or how they are. Stump and her fellow Solvers must come up with creative ways to thwart the Unimaginables ever more complicated and dangerous schemes.

What makes Unimaginable unique is the accessibility of the metaphors at play throughout the story. While not necessarily marketed as a children's book, the playful tone and proverbial nature of the protagonist's challenges are reminiscent of morally-centered children's fare. Stump faces her problems head on, and encourages her accomplices to not be afraid of coming up with innovative solutions. It's actually quite charming how Pinchuk keeps the allegorical problem-solving nature of his plot so readily accessible on the surface of the narrative.

There are plenty of cute moments in the book where characters use dream logic or some other absurd literalism to solve a problem, but really you want to read this one for the overall message. Kurt Belcher's art is a bit chaotic, and the lettering leaves much to be desired. If you can get into the story, though, those things can be overlooked. I wouldn't recommend Unimaginable if you're a die-hard comics fan looking for a challenging or powerful read, but this book seems like it would be a fantastic choice for introducing a younger reader to the medium.

Rating

Unimaginable
by Tom Pinchuk and Kurt Belcher

Story—6.67
Not very challenging, but a cute and quirky concept that the plot clings to genuinely.

Style—6.83
Belcher's art is not for everyone, but it certainly has a distinct style, and Pinchuk's writing is clear and easy to follow.

General—7
If you've got a young one at home who you're trying to get interested in comics, or reading in general, Unimaginable would be a great place to start. That is probably the exact opposite response that one would have to Tom Pinchuk's previous OGN, Hybrid Bastards!, which shows that the man's got range.

Overall—6.83



Keep reading, Genoshans!

WHY BUY? Hybrid Bastards! (Tom Pinchuk & Kate Glasheen)

Why Buy Hybrid Bastards!?
by author Tom Pinchuk

Because it’s the weirdest comic in the whole wide world!

That may sound like a bold claim, but I’ve made it to countless readers over the years that I’ve promoted the book, and not one has called me out on it yet. Not a single one. Brian asked me to kick off the “Why Buy?” feature on Daily Genoshan, and I’ve found that that’s the best answer - - that’s the most succinct way to describe my comic.

After you read this official synopsis, I think you’ll be inclined to agree…

Hybrid Bastards! is about creatures born in a practical joke of mythic proportions. One night, the Greek god Zeus gets duped into being ferociously attracted to inanimate objects. For one mindless night, he sows his seed into cars, walls, laundry, and basically everything else you can think of. Because he's a god, these things get pregnant and they give birth. When the unholy offspring come of age, they want what all children want - - their Daddy's love. But he's disgusted by them, he wants 'em swept under the rug like so much dust, and there lies the battle of wills, the fractured family drama.

And as crazy as that sounds, that's only the beginning. The madness escalates from page to page, from panel to panel. Reading this comic is going to blow your mind so bad, your brains will be all over the ceiling. It’ll give you a charge that starts in your tail bone and shoots all the way up your spine until it ignites your hair into a furious blaze. It'll force you to divide your life into two eras: before reading it.... and after.

But you’re not big on hyperbole. You want hard facts.

How about some specs? Archaia, the publisher, has put together another gorgeous hardcover here (as has become their signature) that’ll make you look that much cooler for having one on your coffee table or on your bookshelf. Buy this on Amazon for a discount and you’ll get 77 pages of gloriously painted art, a totally-insane back-up short, criminally-cracked concept designs, and probably the most diverse selection of guest pin-ups ever assembled. And you’re going to get a full story. This isn’t the first of a planned series. We may come back and revisit these characters someday, but we made this with the attitude that there is no tomorrow. We didn’t save anything, we didn’t hold back on anything. We put everything on the table and packed everything we wanted to do into this comic. And I think anybody irked by leisurely decompression in comics will appreciate that.

But you want the really serious answer.

The serious answer is that comics can be too serious for their own good a lot of the time. Make no mistake - - I love Max, I love Vertigo, I love intense comics that you don’t want your Mom to see, I love comics that make incisive points about reality, politics, and philosophy. But I also love comics that flippantly throw the rules out the window because what they want do is simply more fun, and I sadly don’t see enough of those comics. I’m talking about Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run, Scud the Disposable Assassin, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. I’m talking about Silly Symphonies and Merry Melodies from the golden age of cartoons; back before Bugs, Mickey, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop and their pals had to start acting respectably. I’m talking about comics and toons that invited you into a living, breathing world of phantasmagoria where dream logic is king.

That’s my intention with Hybrid Bastards!, and that’s what that talented lunatic, Kate Glasheen, has helped me create. This book isn’t all snarky one-liners about Greek mythology and involved jokes about laundry creatures keying cars… even though it has plenty of that. Hybrid Bastards! is about giving you a comic that's genuinely unpredictable, that's so unique it defies categorization, that doesn't fit into any box, that gloriously smashes the high-brow and the low-brow together, that escalates in insanity all the way from panel one to the titanic twisted final splash page.

And that, sirs and madams, is why you should buy Hybrid Bastards!