‘Brawler’ Issue 3 popped through my letterbox the other day with a John Higgins cover and 8 (count them) super strips.
‘Brawler’ offers strong dependable stories with some top notch artwork. I’m not a big fan of ‘to be continued’ stories in titles that, in some cases, can be a year between issues. But what ‘Brawler’ tries to do is give you a complete story with a cliff hanger that will lead to another complete chapter, so you don’t have to necessarily go back to other issues to catch up.
Brawlers inspiration is ‘Warrior’ and whilst it doesn’t have a ‘Marvelman’ or ‘V For Vendetta’ stories like ‘Major Rakhana’, ‘Killing Stroke’ and ‘Wolfheart’ are pretty strong slices of action that wouldn’t have been out of place in that seminal title.
‘Amnesia Agents’ by Jason Cobley and James Gray is interesting with shades of ‘Lost’ meets ‘Sapphire and Steel’. ‘The Baker Street Irregulars’ is a lot of gothic fun and I particularly liked ‘Beneath The Tomb’ by Jorgen Karlsson and Hakan Aydn, despite a pun at the end which made me groan!
Overall ‘Brawler’ is one of the most original and strongest indie anthology titles. Indeed it is on a par, if not better, than mainstream comic titles. Get all three titles so far. You will be glad you did.
Tony Foster
Check out some of the Best of Brawler and ComicScene Annual in this Brawler special here and check out Time Bomb Comics website for all their back issues here.
ComicScene magazine 
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