Uncertain, Fugitive, Half-fabulous

Scott Thompson is great, and out of all of the Kids in the Hall he's created the most indelible recurring characters. How could I not buy a graphic novel wherein he puts one of this best characters through the first part of a fantasy trilogy?

Husk: The Hollow Planet is one of the weirdest things I've ever read, because it's a Barsoom-style sword-and-sorcery story about a recurring sketch comedy character that is played partly, but not entirely, for laughs. Thompson clearly has a lot of affection for the character, and this largely keeps the book from being a complete parody... which is weird, because it feels like that's really what it should be.

From his origins on The Kids in the Hall in... God, the 80s, I think, Danny Husk's always been a pretty one-dimensional character, so it's interesting how Thompson uses the world around him, especially in the first, non-fantasy, half to generate an awful lot of rather depressing pathos. It's pretty much all about getting old and being painfully normal... until Danny falls into the center of the Earth. The story loses a bit of its emotional charge when the fantasy stuff picks up, actually, but it segues into good weird fun that never quite lets you know how much of it is or isn't parody, which is kinda fun in and of itself.

All in all fun, strangely sincere, and really weird due to that sincerity. I'm looking forward to the next volume.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to discuss the art. The art's pretty enjoyable most of the time, fun and suitably grand or small depending on the moment. Sometimes it feels a little halfway done, like another critical eye should've gone over it, but any ill will it could engender is quickly made up by how perfectly Danny Husk himself is rendered... like Scott Thompson, but not too much.