‘Burnouts #1’ (review)

Written by Dennis Culver
Illustrated by Geoffo
Published by Image Comics

 
There’s one scene I like in Image’s Burnouts #1. I like it a lot, actually. I just wish I liked everything around it as much.

The premise of Burnouts is essentially a riff on John Carpenter’s They Live! As in that cult classic movie, the aliens have essentially already taken over but you can only see them under special circumstances.

Otherwise, they look normal.

In this case, the circumstance is that you must have some sort of buzz going.

Our young protagonist attends a party and is passed an illicit substance which he proceeds to inhale deeply. When he finishes coughing, he suddenly sees bug-eyed, tentacled, green aliens floating around the room and going onto various people’s bodies, leaving them with a green glow.

That’s the cool scene, by the way. Would look awesome in a movie.

The long leadup to that scene, though, is pretty dull, and except for the aliens, the art is rather “muddy” looking.

The title characters, burnouts who had, themselves previously discovered the aliens when stoned or drunk, then turn up, kill some aliens, and drag our POV guy away with them as the police arrive. They give a little bit of exposition before he runs home to a cliffhanger I saw coming from around page 5.

While Burnouts doesn’t seem as though it’s meant as an all-ages book, neither does it come across as a mature audiences book. Color me surprised then to find a rather explicit scene in the multi-page preview at the back of the book for a completely different series.

Burnouts #1 isn’t horrible, but it’s a bit of an also ran as far as Image’s recent track record of particularly impressive titles.