Norman #1 Review

Norman #1 Review
Written by: Stan Silas
Artist: Stan Silas
Lettering: Cat Connery
Publisher: Titan Comics
Review by Gregory Brothers

Overall I am a fan or the old schools comedy horror franchises of the 80’s and early 90’s. Things like Gremlins, Childs play and even Critters, where the violence is plentiful but never done in a graphic way. So when I decided to take a look at Norman from Titan Comics I expected to find many of the same elements of those moves, only in print.

The books main focus is on Norman who is an eight year old boy who wants to grown up and be just like Freddy Krueger. He also has a imaginary friend by the name of Thing-A-Me, who is a purple devil. The story is very disjointed to me. It feels as if we are constantly just jumping from one part of the story to another without and real flow. We starts with a girl that we later find out is a student named Grace hiding in a house and finding the dead body of a fellow classmate. We then jump back to two days before and a teacher yelling at her students about how to properly lie to the police. Another jump to the to the woods and we are finally introduced to Norman who is having a conversation with his imaginary friend. The next jump leads us to start to meet the rest of the students including learning Graces name. Without much background given it seems as if Grace is in a situation she is not use to, and having to adjust to her new circumstances. The other students play a very small role throughout the book other than being foil for the teacher, as she spends most of the panels they are in yelling at the students.

The art is an anime style with small bodies and bigger heads with even bigger eyes, and exaggerated expressions. The traditional panel to panel movement stacked on top of each other allows for quite a bit to be stuffed into each page without feeling overwhelmed. The colors are bright and vibrant, giving a more upbeat feeling than the stories feel.

Verdict:
Skip it. It took me awhile to find a way to write this review. I was not a fan of this comic at all. With horror comics, be it straight horror or comedy horror there has to be a character that you can connect with. It might be one of the people trying to escape, or it might be sympathy for the circumstances of the villain. In this issues I could not find a single character that I cared about and what their circumstances were. There is nothing that happens here that compels me to pick up a second issue. Maybe the comic would read better as a graphic novel but as a single issue there are just way to many misses for me to continue.