Rating: 2 1/2 stars
Chad is an unemployed punk musician whose guitar is usually in hock. Chad’s wife, Amber, is apparently a six foot mantis who happens to be a stripper and the bread winner in the family. They live in Astoria, Oregon, which is under siege by female mantids who get their protein by eating the heads off all the males. Feeling less than warm and fuzzy towards his wife after a few years of marriage, Chad needs a little help to get mister happy in the mood and downs four internet turbo Viagra – rather than “cutting one, into fours” like his friend told him.
After sex with the wife, which Chad describes to be like “boning a leper,” he finds himself armed with a hard-on from hell and now must go on a mission to deflate it before rigor mortis sets in. While on his journey to find a cure, bugs begin taking over the town. Then Chad meets Lola, one of the last remaining humans who is trying to single-handedly fight the invasion of the mantids.
I am making a second attempt to review this title; I apparently had not imbibed enough coffee the first time around. To help me in my confused state, a wise man told me that Mantids was like Sunset Blvd. in that the beginning was the end and the rest was how it came to be. I pondered this for a moment and realized in my decaffeinated state I had overlooked a major plot point that rendered the rest of my review – depending on who you asked – either incorrect or the babblings of a moron.
That said, I still don’t know what to think of Mantids and it still is sort of funny and annoying – although the latter is less so now. Chad, it turns out isn’t as unobservant as I first thought, but now I have to question his sanity. After finding the shell of his wife’s body by the refrigerator Chad stays with the mantid version and they even have a “kid”, although you can probably mark that up to a shortage of options. Personally, I think it's because any kind of strange a guy can get is good strange, even if it’s literally strange. Mr. Dakron, I'm ready for my close up.
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Hardcover: 134 pages
Publisher: Black Heron Press (October 15, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-0930773861