bounce_1_cover_2013-322861729When left to his own devices on creator-owned material, writer Joe Casey produces comics that are, in the language of critics, some pretty fucked-up shit.

Be it Automatic Kafka or Butcher Baker: The Righteous Maker,  Casey seems to like to traffic in higher-concept superhero stories, loaded with sex, drugs, psychedelia and other stuff that you won’t normally find in a standard superhero story. Like robots with existential malaise using drugs to find meaning in an empty life. Or a dude in a truck killing all comers and fucking anything that walks, moves or crawls. And no matter what, at some point you will find yourself reading and muttering, “Just what in the hell is goning on here?”

Welcome to The Bounce. A comic story that, in 20 short story pages, features not only superhero action, but copious drug use, cop murder, interdimensional travel, and government funded quasi-religious partical experimentation to fracture the nature of reality.

So as is often true to form on a Casey book, I really have no fucking idea what is going on. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t enough good stuff here to stop me from wanting to find out.