Review: Shirtless Bear Fighter (Image Comics)

I'm not the buyer of comics I once was, but I do keep track of things that come out. I mainly follow the X-Men, but occasionally something else catches my attention. Like a comic called Shirtless Bear Fighter, which naturally features a super-strong mountain man who fights bears and loves flapjacks. Yeah, that caught my attention.

The first cover for
Shirtless Bear Fighter

There's actually more to it than that, but that's the basic premise. SBF, as the cool kids call it, has an actual story with humor and action, as well as triumph and some tragedy. Move over Batman, Shirtless’ life has seen its share of grief, too. An abandoned baby raised by talking bears, Shirtless is now on the outs with his sloth of bears due to some dating drama.

Shirtless is a gruff, anti-social man of simple tastes. When we find him, all of the pain has caused him to close himself off from the world. He just roams around naked, defending his forest from an evil toilet paper manufacturer and fighting against bears who seek to do harm. There are plenty of flashbacks to his origin and how he came to be the man he is.

The main cast of characters.

The first time we see SBF.
The blurring is in the book.

Shirtless Bear Fighter proves himself.

Note the sound effect as he turns.

Unfortunately for our hero, no man is an island. When a rogue giant bear attacks Major City, a rogue government agent pleads with Shirtless to save them. Animal control failed. The police failed. The National Guard was outmatched. Our hero is their only hope. If Shirtless won't intervene, they're going to have to launch airstrikes, maybe even nukes! Yikes!

Needless to say, Shirtless ends up accepting the challenge after some soul searching. He leaves his woods and heads to the city in the Bear Plane. The story follows our hero’s adventures across the country where he's forced to battle all kinds of bears. The story comes full circle back to where it all began as we learn more about what's really going on.

How else would SBF get around?

Some bears fight back.

Has Shirtless met his match?

When fighting bears, expect bearhugs.

Shirtless is forced to fight all kinds of bears gone wild.

I'm trying not to spoil too much, but I had to post the panels revealing our hero’s greatest weakness. Superhero traps and weaknesses are just plain fun and this one is terrific. Otherwise, I just pulled out a few of the pages and panels that I thought were most interesting and relevant to this blog. They'll give you a flavor of the story and art, leaving the twists and turns mostly out of it. It all adds up to about 10 pages from 5 issues, which is a mere fraction of the 160-page compilation I bought (about 130 pages of issues and the rest is posters and variant covers).

SBF faces non-bear challenges, too.

Bound by mere toilet paper? How?

Oh, that's how!

In the end, Shirtless Bear Fighter is fun and funny, with an actual plot and real drama to make it engaging. The five-issue mini-series has been conveniently collected into one book. I got it via digital download (rather than a physical copy) using the Image Comics app. It was well worth the $12.99.

What are other bloggers saying?

GAYCOMICGEEK: COMIC LOAD 6/21/17 (SBF #1)

GAYCOMICGEEK: COMIC LOAD 7/26/17 (SBF #2)

So that's my take. What's yours?

Alex