Reviewing Matamoros

When I was at CPAC I had a chance to talk to the guys at the Mastys Comix booth about their new comic book, Matamoros

As you can read from the their website, the story was developed by

John Cox is a painter, cartoonist, and illustrator for hire. He’s the illustrator of the wildly popular Cox & Forkum political cartoon series and also maintains a portfolio of his work at his John Cox Art website. John pencilled, inked and lettered the inaugural of Matamoros. Look for his work again in Issue #2!

Darius LaMonica is a co-writer and co-developer of the Matamoros comic book. A former engineer, he’s published science fiction and first entered the blogosphere several years ago with the FireTariqRamadan blog.

Sleet and Darius are long-time friends. Sleet is the co-writer and co-developer of the Matamoros comic book and cursed even more than Chuck Sobietti on the day Captain America died.

The comic book stars Chuck Sobietti, four-time Purple Heart war hero, who at the start of the story has been severely maimed by an Iranian-made IED while in action in Iraq.

Chuck has more than a passing resemblance to the Six Million Dollar Man of the seventies, and emulates Captain America. His nemesis are Jihadists, not Nazis. Of course, the storyline bucks the trend in our politically-correct world, where entire countries are being pressured to not offend anyone deriding jihadists.

Additionally, the comic book is guaranteed to generate controversy, since it implies that a vigilante would “take care” of the problem. It will take more than that.

However, I was fascinated by the story, and loved the style of the illustrations (some clearly inspired by “300”). I look forward to the next installment of the adventures of Chuck Sobietti.

More than a comic book, it is a graphic novel that should generate discussion. I highly recommend it.

Today FrontPage interviews Darius LaMonica:

And our use of this word in the title has nothing to do with a desire to start some type of religious war. I’ve already dealt with fools raising this straw man against the book. They’re completing missing the point of the title, which is to show that we’ve got to get inside the heads of today’s jihadists to determine their motivation for attempting to restart a global jihad. These creeps are already talking about the “tragedy of Andalusia (Muslim Spain)” and how they want it back. And they’re not basing these threats on some “root cause” of poverty – they’re basing it on their notion that they have a religious duty to re-conquer any areas that once were held by the Caliphate. This is the same basis for their desire to conquer Israel and the people in Spain who voted Jose Aznar out of office had better realize that if Israel falls to radical Islam, Spain is going to be the next country in the jihadists’ crosshairs.

Also,

FP: What do you hope to achieve with your comic book and with America’s first anti-jihadist comic book hero?

LaMonica: I’d really like two things to happen with the book.

First, I’d like the readers to get interested in “World War IV” as Norman Podhoretz calls the current conflict. We’ve added some little “clues” in the book – the historical references with Sobietti’s name, a panel that references “asymmetric warfare,” etc. – which add to the plot.

Second, we really want the men and women in uniform to see one pop cultural artifact that’s showing them as valorous in their fight against Islamofascism. The highlight of this book for me was sending some copies to a few soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they can get fifteen minutes of entertainment out of the book and know that they’re fighting a true enemy of civilization then I’ll consider the book a rousing success.

It’ll be interesting to see if the blogs commenting at the Memeorandum link have bothered to read it.

They should.

You can buy it here.

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