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About The Toxic Avenger #2
Writer: Matt Bors
Artist: Fred Harper
Colorist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Rob Steen
Publisher: Ahoy Comics
Cover Art: Fred Harper
Publication Date: November 13th, 2024
The Toxic Avenger #2 Review:
Matt Bors and Fred Harper continue the tale of the most infamous Troma citizen to ever step foot into our universe. Picking up immediately where the first issue left off, we’re introduced to Melvin’s nonstop bullying at the hands of jock, Pluto. A scene which foreshadows the confrontation of Toxie’s discovery of an excessively mutated Pluto to *Color Out Of Space*-like qualities. Immediately blaming Toxie for his situation, he becomes enraged and thanks to the intervention of Toxie’s best friend, Yvonne, is able to calm him down.
This is short lived, however, when corporate goon and thoroughly unpleasant woman, Lydia Flick (from *Biohazard Solutions*), turns up to the house saying she wants to pay Toxie to be a Biohazard Solutions goodwill ambassador of sorts. As Toxie, Toxie’s mum and Yvonne begin to negotiate with her, Pluto bursts out of the house demanding Lydia tell him what she did with friends. Friends the reader hasn’t met yet but who are no doubted suffering the same grotesque mutations that Pluto has.
Amongst the enraged furor, Lydia is able to slip away and inform her superiors that it’s time to move from containment to elimination. While Toxie goes after the crazed Pluto, we’re introduced to a group of marines on their way via helicopter to Tromaville. It’s here their dialogue taps into the blurry lined hyper-aggressive homo-eroticism of the first Toxic Crusader film. An aspect of the story which provided a barely adequate commentary on the correlation of violence and sex.
What follows is a brain-rotting Pluto who is obsessed with getting bigger and stronger - and so goes about consuming as much of the toxic waste which mutated him in the first place. Pretty soon Toxie has a full blown kaiju mutant situation on his hands which is exacerbated by the arrival of the marines firing a machine gun at Pluto. This causes a “blow hole” in Pluto’s walking carcass, allowing for Toxie to crawl into and cause an end to this madness by disabling Pluto’s heart. Fred Harper’s artwork is limitless in its ability to engage the reader. It’s a true body horror meets Honey I Blew Up the Kid story complicated by the overarching bullshit of a nefarious corporation looking to control the citizens of Troma. Sound familiar?
The Toxic Avenger #2 is satirically poignant, outrageously hilarious and reinvigorates a largely dead franchise. Proving that comedic body-horror is a sub-genre we all need. And that’s why The Toxic Avenger #2 is My Kind Of Weird.
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