Hell Yeah #1

Hell Yeah
Story by Joe Keatinge with Art by Andrew Szymanowicz

Hell Yeah has an interesting premise that deals with the children of famous superheroes. Ben Day is the son of the man who ended the Gulf War when he was saved by a team of superheroes. Until that moment, superheroes never existed but all at once, they were everywhere and some people even began receiving powers either through birth or puberty. Ben received a bar code tattoo one random day. Ben has lived in the shadow of all the good his father brought to the world and is acting out in fits of violence, mostly in the form of fist fights which his prestigious school looks down on. His friend (possibly love interest) Sara, questions him on his motives but doesn’t receive a concrete answer. His dad also attempts talking to Ben, but an aside to Ben’s unseen mother bluntly leads us to believe something is not what it seems. I won’t ruin the ending but shit is about to go down with the arrival of some very special people. I am not familiar with anything else Keatinge has written as I don’t count Popgun because it was an anthology and Keatinge only edited it but I am definitely interested enough to pick up the second issue.

Art wise, it’s nothing to write home about. I like the gentle touch Szymanowicz has when drawing the ladies (Sara and an all girl rock band named the All New All Differents) but otherwise it’s kind of flat which could just be the colorist. Sort of like Lovern Kindzierski on Animal Man. Ben Day spends most of the comic looking constipated and/or angry which isn’t the case if you’re to judge by the storyline.

I liked Hell Yeah, but I’m unsure of the mass appeal it will have on the general audience. It’ll probably be a hit or miss for all of you comic readers. If you picked it up already, what did you think?