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.
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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.
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| The main cast of characters. |
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The first time we see SBF.
The blurring is in the book. |
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| Shirtless Bear Fighter proves himself. |
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| 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.
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| How else would SBF get around? |
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| Some bears fight back. |
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| Has Shirtless met his match? |
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| When fighting bears, expect bearhugs. |
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| 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).
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| SBF faces non-bear challenges, too. |
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| Bound by mere toilet paper? How? |
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| 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?
So that's my take. What's yours?
Alex
Frickssexypics here. Had to do it like this since it logged me out and I forgot the pw. Haha. Anyways. This was hilarious. I mean I was cracking up. He fights bears of all types haha. And the best plane. Seriously. Insane. His biggest weakness is wearing a shirt !!! Haha!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. Hope you get back in. Do I know my password? Hm. Anyway, SBF is pretty funny throughout the story.
DeleteHi Alex,
ReplyDeleteI think its cool you posted on this comic… !
I picked up the first issue of SBF and thought it was a refreshing romp that was such a change of pace from the comics I tend to follow. The storyline almost seemed to be something out of classic “Mad” or “Not Brand Ecchh” rather than something that could sustain a series either limited or ongoing. I have been “waiting for the trade” and now I know its available due to your post.
Been reading your blog for quite some time and kind of had a inkling you may be a “comics guy” … when I was growing up I hid my so “wrestling” fetish from my family… (my mother tended to blame my “comics” interests what she perceived where my faults and she passed before I “came out” so god knows she would have blamed comics for being gay somehow…)
There definitely seems to be a correlation between comics, wrestling and homosexuality but that is a topic too involved to be hashed out on a talkback … and maybe too broad for me to comment on fully (though I’ve lived it in a way)…
Great Blog! Keep up the good work!
Ray in Atlanta
Appreciate it. I thought SBF was excellent. It was much more than the one-note joke that I thought it might be.
DeleteI can empathize with you. As a teen, I hid my interest in wrestling, too. Bard has done tongue-in-cheek posts around "what made me gay (not really)" theme. Comics, wrestling and Tarzan movies would all be like that for me. I know quite a few gay guys in real life who are into at least two of those three.