Toxie Team-Up #1 pairs Troma’s Toxic Avenger with the protagonists of other AHOY Comics. Up first is Jesus Christ from Mark Russell and Richard Pace’s Second Coming, and it goes on an all-out assault on late stage capitalism with Jesus and Toxie teaming up to take down the greedy executive of a local Tromaville soup kitchen. There’s a lot of caption boxes about theology and ethics as well as big panels of Toxie smashing (usually deserving) folks’ heads through walls as Jesus molds him into someone who goes after the underlying causes of society’s ills and not just its symptoms.
Russell and Pace definitely have good hearts, but the weird, twisted nature of Tromaville kind of cushions the blows and shock value of the inclusion of Second Coming‘s Jesus in this comic. That series (And Pace’s deadpan art style.) worked because it was about Jesus appearing in regular day society and seeing how little had changed in two millennia since he worked. However, the world of Tromaville is already a slimy mirror at society so the actual Jesus showing up is just another weird wrinkle instead of something jaw dropping and novel. Toxie Team-Up treats Jesus like William Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor treated Sir John Falstaff as a heightened version of an iconic character is placed into a wacky world that’s unlike the setting he debuted in.
However, where Toxie Team-Up #1 succeeds is at the “team-up” part of the title. Mark Russell’s script and the way Richard Pace draws the characters’ physicality gives Jesus and Toxie a fun yin yang type of vibe with Our Lord and Savior having a zen presence compared to the Toxic Avenger’s unbridled rage. I love how they bond over chaotic situations like being thrown into the garbage chute or creating tons of sandwiches out of a few bits of bread and tuna as well as their shared sense of injustice. Toxie is an exposed nerve while Jesus is a strategic sage, who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty every now and then although the eventual comeuppance against the manager of the soup kitchen comes across as quite tame.
To go along with Toxie and Jesus’ bond, Russell and Pace craft a pathetic, create-shareholder-value stooge of an antagonist in the soup kitchen manager, Mr. Frank, that is cathartic for a world where it seems like profit is the only thing that matters. In his palatial office, Frank is completely disconnected from the folks at the soup kitchen he’s serving, and he treats Toxie and Jesus like wait staff and not colleagues. In fact, the soup kitchen is just a front for him to indulge in the basest of hustle culture and exploit the most vulnerable folks of society for his own personal profit. However, Mr. Frank isn’t some kind of supervillain or demon, but that most banal type of evil, middle management.
All in all, Toxie Team-Up #1 is a fun return to the world of Second Coming even if it lacks its parent title’s satirical bite. (The soup kitchen manager naming his model trains after the victims of experimental toxic waste experiments.) I love the arc of Jesus helping Toxie harness his rage to effect real societal change, and they have big co-workers at a crappy job energy. Also, it’s cool to see Richard Pace embrace a more over-the-top Troma style with his visuals to offset his usual realistic style that he showcases in the book’s lone flashback sequence.
Story: Mark Russell Art: Richard Pace Letters: Rob Steen
Story: 7.4 Art: 7.8 Overall: 7.6 Recommendation: Read
AHOY Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: Zeus Comics
