Review: The Holy Roller (Image/Giant Generator Comics)

What do you get when you cross famed comic writer Rick Remender (A Righteous Path of Vengeance, Deadly Class) with Andy Samberg (SNL!), and wait… Joe Trohman from Fall Out Boy?

If you’re thinking Big Lebowski, you’re close but not quite in the right lane. Thanks to Image Comics sticking these crazy, genius minds in a blender, we’ve got ourselves a whacked out story of an old bowling-champion geezer, a burned-out hippie Jewish guy, and their quest to oppose the arrogant, entitled behavior of wannabe Nazis.  

I am not making this up. 

The ten-issue series is a story of Levi Cohen, a young Jewish adult who has grown up under the scrutiny of a town seemingly run by racists and anti-semites, and his return to said town to spend time with his dying father. Unfortunately, it seems nothing has changed since his departure, and if anything how it has become worse. 

In the first two issues we see how Levi opts not to follow in his father’s footsteps of being a bowling champion, and seems to become disillusioned with society as a whole, trying to find a way to save the Earth like many others. But like many others, finding out saving the planet on a large scale is too big a task and often met with disappointment. Upon learning of his father’s illness, Levi returns home to spend his remaining days together. This brings back many memories, some good, but mostly hurtful. While running into some familiar faces, some of the familiar faces are not pleased to see him back. 

In the progressing issues, confrontation leads to extreme, brutal, physicality. When one doesn’t have a tool to defend, you find whatever the hell is at arm’s length. For Levi, irony is a cruel matchmaker, at his arm’s length is a fricken bowling ball. 

This becomes a story about people and voices standing up for themselves and fighting for what is right. It’s about standing up to the loud noise of hate and shutting it out.

The dialogue between Levi and his father is hysterical and as a member of the tribe, I can hear myself having similar insane banter with my parents and grandparents over their perceived failures which I’ve committed meshed with yiddish terminology which I still can’t decipher. 

This series is fricken awesome. I love it. In addition to the outlandishly crazy writing and storytelling, the blood-soaked art by Roland Boschi and Moreno Dinisio works fluidly from one panel to the next, as though I’m watching a comic in motion. 

Come on, Jewish hipster beating up Nazis with a damn bowling ball? Can’t get any better than this. I dare you to change my mind. 

The Holy Roller is available at your local comic book retailer.