Gargoyles: Bad Guys, Volume 1

Gargoyles

by Greg Weisman, Karine Charlebois (Illustrator), Christopher Jones (Illustrator)

Introducing five of the toughest villains in the Gargoyles universe: Hunter - member of a Scottish family of gargoyle-slayers; Dingo - Australian mercenary and charter member of the deadly Pack; Matrix - a nanotech hive-mind artificial intelligence that came very close to destroying the Earth; Yama - a Japanese gargoyle who betrayed his own clan; and Fang - the mutate who would be king. Take this quintet of felons and force them to work on the side of the angels! It may be hard to believe, but these Bad Guys are the best hope we've got! From Gargoyles series creator Greg Weisman and fan-favorite artist Karine Charlebois comes this spin-off graphic novel.

Also referred to as Gargoyles: Bad Guys - Redemption. Collects and republishes issues 1-4 ("Strangers," "The Lost," "Estranged," and "Louse"), as well as two previously unpublished comics, "Strangled" and "Losers."

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Young Adult, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2009

About the author

Greg Weisman (BA Stanford, MPW U.S.C.) has been a storyteller all his life. His first professional work was as an Editor for DC Comics, where he also wrote Captain Atom.

Greg worked at Walt Disney Television Animation from 1989 through 1996. In 1991, Greg created and developed a new series for Disney: GARGOYLES, becoming Supervising Producer and Supervising Story Editor of that series.

In 1998, Greg became a full-time Freelancer. He wrote the new Gargoyles and Gargoyles: Bad Guys comic books for SLG Publishing, while producing, writing, story editing and voice acting for Sony’s The Spectacular Spider-Man. He then moved over to Warner Bros., where he produced, story edited, wrote and voice acted on the new series, Young Justice, as well as writing the companion Young Justice monthly comic book for DC.

Greg was a writer and Executive Producer on the first season of Star Wars Rebels for Lucasfilm and Disney, and he’s also writing the spin-off comic Star Wars Kanan: The Last Padawan. His first novel, Rain of the Ghosts, was published in 2013; its sequel, Spirits of Ash and Foam, arrived in bookstores in 2014.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This comic gave voices to secondary antagonists of 'Gargoyles' series. In fact, all of the heroes, exept for Dingo and Fang, were one-shot characters. Now I've got to like Yama's strong sense of honor, Matrix's undeniable machine logic and Hunter's relationships with her brothers (though she is still much of enigma to me). Dingo don't need special mention - he is plain cool. Even Fang, the most low-moraled of them all, has certain charm. That bad guy managed to surprise me twice! The plot is good, though it gives more questions than answers - you can see Greg Weisman had big plans for it. I also wish the comic was in colour like 'Clan Building'.

[Ken-ichi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not terrible. I thought the art was actually better than the Clan Building series. I also had way lower expectations, given that I had no emotional attachment to any of the characters, all of whom were one-off or somewhat recurring villains from the show.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally got to read Bad Guys thanks to the Kickstarter finally, finally! getting things printed and distributed. I'll admit, I hadn't been terribly interested in the premise going in, but by the end, I was a little sad to see it wrap up. This is all there is. (And now I know why there are bug-people in the Labyrinth in the main run! God, you think it's bad to be a mutant cat-person experiment....)

The beginning was a little disjointed, swapping between the Suicide Squad -- I mean, Redemption...Brigade? in action and the flashbacks of Robyn recruiting each one. I had not realized the entire thing would be in black and white, and I found myself wishing that present day scenes had been in color, at least.

With all that plot happening, there's not much time to get to know the characters deeper. There's some nice scenes with Robyn and John paralleling when their father was killed. Dingo, clearly being set up as a love interest for Robyn, gets some backstory. Matrix turns out to be a delight. Yama is decent; Fang is Fang.

This also got a little darker than expected, even though apparently they still can't say ass. (Well, that's not true. Someone got to say ass, but another line about a "stick up her--" got goofily interrupted. Maybe there's a one ass limit.) We see the shoulders-down view of someone who hanged themselves, as well as Dingo's mom being strangled by her boyfriend, who tells him she did a runner and raises up Dingo himself.

Oh, and loved the throwaway dialogue from a hockey match in the background of a scene: "Puck's recovered by Spiner..." Chef's kiss.

[jcw3-john · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read worse, but I still found this kind of a chore - felt like reading a rejected TV pilot, which, admittedly, is a lot of Gargoyles plots (hi, New Olympus) but they're normally better executed than this. There's a lot of circuitous logic at play, Falstaff isn't a compelling villain in the slightest and feels tacked on, we barely know who the Redemption Brigade is working for and why they're fighting.

More granular dislikes - I don't care for Fang as a character and his presence is largely exclusively negative in my eyes. I thought Matrix being disabled by EMPs and electrical attacks was dumb - if it were that easy, why didn't Fox and her mother try it in the Avalon episode he premiered in? Wouldn't have even needed the vision quest.

I liked Hunter being framed as an absurdly capable pulp hero, Yama was insanely cool. Dingo was there. I thought it was interesting how this comic tried to tackle or allude to darker topics - we see a suicide, they allude to child SA at one point, there's swearing and blood and such - I don't think this comic was good enough to use any of those ideas all that well, and it wasn't very good at managing the gravitas of the heavier topics it tried to handle.

There are enough cool moments that I didn't hate it and was never annoyed for too long, but it's not very good and it's hard to imagine me ever recommending it. 7/10, a C-, because there were a lot of moments in this where I was like 'oh, that's pretty cool!'

[Mega · Rating 3 out of 5]

DISCLAIMER: This is for Issues #5-6, since they are not available on this website.

Oh gee, an issue of a comic where a character(s) tries to take down the Illuminati, and shenanigans ensue. Never seen that done before.

Also, there's a part in this issue where young Dingo just straight up asks this John guy if he was a molester, which certainly took me by surprise. Never thought I would see anyone saying that word in a Disney comic, but hey, I guess there is a first time for everything. And it was a good thing that we got that out in the air too to make sure that he wasn't one, so good on you, Dingo.

Issue #5

Oh gee, an issue of a comic where a character meets up with an old friend, and shenanigans ensue. Never seen that done before.

Also, this series is over now, so what is the moral lesson of the day? That these guys are definitely gonna starve and die out here in the middle of the ocean, with nobody to come out and rescue them......... that's a shame. It's fine, it's not like they were gonna get another comic series after this.

Issue #6

[Etola · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Gargoyles from the first time an episode aired on TV way back in 1994. Bad Guys has a lot of the over-the-topness of the cartoon, so there were moments that I just found a little silly, but those are coupled with moments that would NEVER have aired in a children's cartoon--in particular, an on-screen murder and an off-screen suicide.

Definitely worth the read, though the ending feels more like the ending to a pilot episode of a series, than a conclusion in and of itself.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly this was pretty good. A quick, fun read. But it had next to no connection to the main Gargoyles, and is not a very satisfying read as it is barely the intro to this team. Decent art, especially in the second half. But not essential reading at all, I don't think. Some of these characters may show up later in the recent ongoing, but not enough to justify buying the new copy of this book.

[Tiffany Lynn Kramer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
Extremely fun but not exactly mind blowing. There is a surprisingly dark moment toward the end that caught me off guard and the ending leaves plenty of room for more adventures the I'd like to see.

[Allan Olley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of the six comics of the Disney's Gargoyles spin off comic Gargoyles: Bad Guys. Originally published 2007-2009 they have been out of print since then and I wanted to read them and missed my chance to buy them new, so I pledged to a Kickstarter to republish them. It is the story of a bunch of villains from the Gargoyles cartoon seeking redemption as a wandering squad of heavily armed high-tech problem solvers. The 1st 5 issues are told as flashbacks during a mission that is completed in the sixth issue.

The flashbacks tell the story of how the team was assembled. We begin with the former pack member Dingo and his rogue nanobot AI Matrix who had become local heroes in Australia when they are forcibly recruited by the former gargoyle hunter Robyn Canmore. These stories are repeated as they recruit the exiled Japanese gargoyle Yama and finally the team is saddled with the aggressive and selfish Mutate Fang a man transformed into a winged cat man. Technically Matrix does not consider himself to be seeking redemption (although he is reformed from his original goal of conquering the world via geometry) and Fang's motives are unclear. Other than these origin stories the team also tangles with the machinations of Anton Sevarius, the mysterious Illuminati and a few new villains. The story makes a few references to Gargoyles continuity and there are some ongoing story threads in the background related to the then ongoing Gargoyles Clan Building comic.

The entire book is in black and white (with colour covers). The artwork is clean and makes the action and characters clear. The dialogue is fun and engaging. There are some murders and a suicide depicted more or less explicitly, but not too much gore.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the most enjoyable of the three volumes of comics spun off from the cartoon series. One of the major strengths of Weisman's writing is definitely the multidimensional characterization of the villains. They're always moving around on the moral compass and have complex motivations. In the show, my favourite character is definitely David Xanatos, who could be pegged as one of the big bads in the series, and that sort of attention to careful character construction carries over here. Though I am a little disappointed that Xanatos did not feature in this book. Probably would have been what could've tipped this into 4-star territory for me.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was by far the most enjoyable Gargoyle comic collection. I wish they had actually used this to start a well-deserved spinoff.

[Scott Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these when they were first published back in the day. I feel the same now as I did then. It’s a tease! It just whets the appetite for more. I wish this series had continued.