Comic Review: The Ludocrats #3

The Ludocrats #3

Image Comics

Writers: Kieron Gillen and Jim Rossignol

Artists: Jeff Stokely and Tamra Bonvillain

The Ludocrats is a brightly-colored, foul-mouthed, dirty-minded series. With it comes a lot of humor and charm. I wasn’t fully on-board from the start, but this issue feels like the pieces are finally starting to come together and the full potential of the story is on display.

The previous issue ended with our wacky group of characters saving the protagonist’s love interest: a part-locomotive/part-human(?) woman named Gratty. She possesses information relating to the villain’s plans, and so the group decides to torture her. Gratty, however, practically begs to be tortured, and what follows in this issue is a humorously-uncomfortable, consensual “torture” that Gratty enjoys far too much. This scene is funny enough on its own, but what follows is much funnier and is probably the best joke that the series has done so far.

The term “humorously-uncomfortable” could probably be used to describe this series as a whole. The majority of this series involves placing the characters in sexual situations and then having it go in bizarre and unexpected directions, usually resulting in a good laugh. This issue seemed funnier than the previous ones, in my opinion. Particularly compared to the second issue, which I found to be a little too gross. But, if you’re into gross-out humor, then you’d probably find that issue pretty hilarious as well. If you haven’t already figured it out, this series is absolutely not for kids.

The artwork in this series definitely deserves recognition. The cover alone gives a great sense of how colorful and vibrant these characters are. Otto von Subertan’s bright orange beard, Elaina’s teal skin, and Hades’ light-green glasses all pop out from the panels and demand attention. They live in a fantasy world, so the fantastical and mythical happenings throughout the story have a great look to them as well. The emotions of all of the characters are drawn wonderfully. A specific detail used several times in this issue is the way the characters’ eyes will shrink down to simple dots whenever they are surprised, and it never fails to make me chuckle.

An area named The Obscenitarium appears in this issue, and the design of it is just as chaotic and colorful as I’d hope given the overall artwork in this series. The colors become darker at one point in this section of the story, shifting the tone and making a pleasant contrast to the colorful characters present.

I was surprised to learn that this is only a five-issue series because I feel like it is just now really getting started. Each issue ends with detailed lore-dumps that help to flesh out the world into one I really enjoy. The characters and the world they are in are so creative and wacky that I would gladly read more if it is continued later in the future.

This issue of The Ludocrats is the best one so far. The story is getting more engaging, the humor is getting funnier, and the characters are behaving wackier (which I didn’t think was possible). Overall, the series seems to be improving in every way, and I hope it maintains this up to a wild, satisfying, and hilarious finale.

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Read Ludocrats #3 on Comixology