Simon Oliver/Tony Moore/Philip Bond/Chris Samnee/Mike Hawthorne/Ande Parks
DC/Vertigo
humanity has been the ruling species on this planet for thousands of years now. but if you think about it, including the periodic reigns of other life forms (e.g., reptiles), civilizations do come and go. it may only be a matter of time before mankind also goes the way of the dinosaurs. so are we really in control? who is?
newcomer Simon Oliver pulls out all the stops in his comic debut with The Exterminators, a blend of sci-fi, horror, talky drama, political and corporate intrigue, and self-examination, in collaboration with indie artist Tony Moore. i mean, barring the Pixar cartoons, no one would bother to write a comic book series revolving around bugs. or the guys that kill bugs (unless you count Starship Troopers, but that's on a different scale).
bugs, insects and pests have been a bane of society since civilization began, and perhaps they are a by-product of progress. despite inventing ways to efficiently eliminate them, we can never totally do. they even stir our imaginations as a fantasy scourge in novels and films - add some radiation, voila! instant hyped-up objet d'pop culture, on both sides of the fence. do you prefer 8-Legged Freaks or Spider-Man? Food of the Gods or Mickey Mouse?
note: if you're eating while reading this, and have no stomach for gory details, just go to disney.com right now.
here we are in 21st century L.A. where we find one Henry James, ex-con, starting a new job as an exterminator for Bug Bee Gone, owned by his mother's 2nd husband Nils. his first week on the job has him teamed up with AJ, a corrupt misogynist racist bastard.
aside from extracting "favors" from (female) customers who can't pay, AJ also spends his free time getting high ... injecting himself with Draxx, Bug Bee Gone's roach poison of choice. but despite his negatives (nyuk nyuk), the jerk's a pest expert.
and without much ado, he bites the dust in issue #2, exploding from the inside (not for the squeamish). he would be the second fatality in that same day, as Henry discovers another dead body with similar cause of death. he also discovers a box with a scarab symbol among AJ's things.
Saloth Sar, Bug Bee Gone's resident chemical expert, has just presented Nils with evidence that Draxx may not be what it seems - introducing it to a cockroach's latent mutant gene makes it go nuts. introduced intravenously to the human body, Draxx becomes a potent addictive drug as any, and once it reaches its saturation point, organs will go boom! (exhibit A: AJ)
with AJ dead, Henry needs a new partner to finish up training. he either teams up with Kevin, a (yech) bug-eating weirdo, or Stretch, a mysterious Zen-quoting black cowboy. thankfully (but he doesn't know it at that time), Nils pairs him with the latter.
their first team-up brings them to a rat-infested halfway house owned by a friend of a local congressman. Henry is incensed by Stretch's pacifist stance seemingly clashing with his decision to take hush money from the owner, who wants them to shut up about the shoddy treatment of the inmates. little does Henry know that Stretch got it all worked out. owner and his roadster goes ... off-road.
we should do this to all corrupt elected officials. sometimes we can't wait for Karma, can we?
just to let you appreciate how crappy and thankless an exterminator's job is, what if you wake up at night and find yourself in this situation?
still wary of Stretch's belief system, Henry rides out with Kevin for a couple of days. not to say that it wasn't interesting - the Carpenters all day on the truck radio, and finding pests in a ridiculous situation like this:
"supersize me!" seems too weak
Kevin also has a fatalistic streak - and believes Judgment Day will be coming soon, with the people screaming for them "Bug Brothers" to save them from damnation (being overrun by Mother Nature's wrath). Kevin then mentions the symbolism of a Scarab - which drives Henry to discover a scarab beetle key in the home where he discovered the dead body previously.
Henry also provides a quid pro quo for a single mother, whose apartment is infested by roaches. before you pass judgment, Henry did the job in exchange for book-keeping for BBG. however, the job he did (you got it ... spraying roaches with Draxx) just made the sitch worse.
never happens to Wall Street types
Draxx is like PCP, crack, shabu and cocaine all rolled into a hand grenade.
notifying Nils of the problem, and thus independently verifying Saloth's findings, the BBG guys have no choice but to do a Code IV. this means low-intensity kaingin (slash-and-burn for you English types).
in the process, Henry finds Stretch a suitable partner and a good friend.
aside from his daily adventures with BBG, Simon Oliver antes up the multi-threaded story by having his girlfriend Laura (who wants him to find a better job) get a job and promotion with Ocran, the corporation responsible for Draxx, and whom Saloth suspects of developing Draxx for the military back in Vietnam, and peddled as roach poison decades later.
by the way, did i mention Laura swings both ways and thus has an easier way to the top?
Henry's continuing involvement with BBG and his increasing comfiness with his new pals drives him further away from Laura ...
when you think of Laura, laugh don't cry, i know she'd want it that way
... and at the same time finding new love in a form of Page, a ... what shall we call it ... a worker in a "fantasy sex institute". damn, give me the address!!!
raaawwwwrrrr.
despite BBG's best efforts, Saloth fears that the Draxx-powered bugs are not going away anytime soon, and the possibility of them getting organized is high. his fears are realized when a the truck carrying the dead roaches gets into an accident, and the lone survivor (i don't mean the sanitation workers) gets to fight another day.
you have to follow all the storylines, but to Oliver's credit they never get convoluted.
it turns out that Page's day job pays for her post-grad Egyptology studies, so Henry has more reasons to hang out with her. Page helps him out with the Scarab box questions with Professor Wolfe, a spinster with a pizza addiction, and who may or may not have been the official psychiatrist for the Nazi party (and still pining for Carl Jung, that horny toad).
it also turns out that Kevin the weirdo has S&M inclinations, cranking up his exterminator instincts by moonlighting as El Muerte Negra, a player in the underground wrestling circuit. he goes up against rats. did i mention he goes up against rats?
a deleted scene in Nacho Libre
Saloth Sar, genetic genius working for a bug company, may have his own demons - he has a hidden past working for the great humanitarian Pol Pot, a past that he has no compunction to do anything to keep hidden.
and he has good reason to keep it that way, since he's kind of getting some. revenge of the nerds, baby!!!
but wait ... Pol Pot's real name is actually Saloth Sar!?! Mr. Oliver, you fiendish, you.
Nils has to reluctantly dip into and retell BBG's history as a company founded by his father, with a partner named Crawley. Crawley until his death, was increasingly becoming a sexual deviant and dabbled in ritualistic practices, not coincidentally tied in with BBG's meal ticket: bugs. (crap, did i say "meal"?)there's also the research made by Page and Professor Wolfe, about a brutal Egyptian king named Atan, who worshipped a bug deity called Kheperon, and forced his people to do so or else. just prior to being mummified, Atan vowed to return in another form, one way or another, to bring dominion of the bugs over mankind.
sounds like a movie to me!
oh, yeah, and there's the sightings of a mysteriously-resurrected AJ. no coincidence.
Saloth's fears are realized when a bug insurgency takes place, and they methodically attack a power station (no, not that semi-supergroup).
the Bush presidency will always have its laughable moments
Detective Hunter, an ornery detective character role made for Jack Nicholson, is still unconvinced about Henry's innocence in AJ's death, but promises to sweep things under the rug if the Bug Brothers fix this mess.
"Protect and Serve" is only for rookie cops. after that, its "Heat and Serve".
what follows is an icky/funny battle down in our sewage system, as Henry, Stretch and Kevin wade through shit (literally) and face off against a probably-resurrected Atan (via AJ) and his roach army.
Oliver has the trio talking like informed and intelligent geeks, rather than the blue collar joes that might be associated with such a job.
i don't have enough experience with being in sewers and how it may affect your logical reasoning; let's just say you might lose your sanity in that muck.
with millions of roaches overloading their sensors, the facility manager has no choice but to pump all the raw sewage out in the sea.
fear factor: septic tank edition
The Exterminators is a funny and interesting read, and even throws in relationship issues more than most. obviously, the story isn't over, with Atan convincing the roaches that he is the real deal, leaving Henry to deal with him in the future as he learns more about the box. plus you have the mega-corporation factor and the knowledge (or not) that Saloth may be on the side of the angels (or not).
oh by the way, did i mention about the sex ... maybe i forgot. my bad.
humanity may still exterminate all the pests plaguing it. but we could still shoot ourselves in the foot. with fatal results.
we could easily be la cucaracha
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issues read: #1-12
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