A review of Elephantmen #6 By Juan Arteaga (Bat-Mite) February 10, 2007 Rating: 8.1 / 10

Writer: Richard Starkings
Artist: Moritat and David Hine
Inker: Ladronn and Rob Steen

"Abandoned by God"

For a comic book built around the mascot for a lettering company, Elephantmen is surprisingly good. Yes, I know, I hardly believe it too. Somebody call Ripley please; because if there was one comic that didn’t have any rights to be entertaining, that comic is the one based on a hippopotamus private eye that, for reasons unknown to human minds, was chosen as the mascot of a comic book lettering comic.

“Hey, Mark, you got any ideas for our mascot?”
“BUTTERFLY PROCTOLOGIST!”
“What?”
“REAL ESTATE SALESMAN GIRAFFE!”
“Jesus! His pills! Somebody get him his pills!”
“F1 RACECAR DRIVER CHIHUAHUA!”
“Knock him out! For God’s sake, just knock him out with something!”
“HIPPOPOTAMUS PRIVATE EYE!”
“Hey! What was that last one?”

That was a dramatization. Even though it is completely made up, it is probably entirely accurate to the smallest detail.

Instead of explaining us what hippopotamus and private detectives have to do with comic book lettering (No, seriously, I would kill to know), Elephantmen instead treats us with a series of vignettes and short stories set in a semi solid Sci-Fi setting about a generic evil mega-conglomerate called Mappo, that tried to create a race of mutated animals super soldiers. Mappo, as far as generic evil super corporations go, is kinda boring and no longer shows up in the comic. I can only assume it was bought by a more interesting evil company like Lexcorp, Weyland Yutani or *Insert retarded Microsoft joke here*. The Elephantmen are free now, and they can pursuit happiness any way they see fit; including becoming private eyes just to baffle me.

Every issue so far has had the same format: First a story set in the present that shows a bit of the life of the mutated animals trying to cohabitate with humans, and also advances the main plot of the series slowly but steady (No easy task), plus a shorter backup story showing something from their pasts at Mappo. This issue is no exception: the first story is about the rhinoceros character, who may be the series bad guy, trying to get married to a human; and the second story about the Sudanese women Mappo kidnapped to give birth to their mutant animals. Elephantmen is very character oriented, and makes a good effort of giving each character his own personality, even though Private Detective Hippopotamus and Mutant super soldiers seems like the kind of concept most writers would use just for dumb action fun instead of human… err… I mean Hippopotamus drama. A gimmick comic that refuses to be just a gimmick comic, I like that.

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