CMYK Reviews

Banana Number One #1
Writer: Joshua Dysart
Artist: Kevin Maguire
Colors: Rico Renzi
Bad Idea

B-Story: When I Was Five
Writers: Mark Waid & David Lapham
Artist: David Lapham

This shit is bananas. Spoilers ahead.

Obvious joke out of the way, this issue presents a wild concept: what if an anthropomorphized banana gains sentience and launches a rebellion against the oppressive forces of humanity with the aid of a sympathetic man who wears a banana costume. This earns Number Two torture in space in an attempt by humanity to find Number One.

The rest of the plot features, in part:

• Waukegan, Illinois being renamed Medieval Town
• A band of sentient kiwis raiding Medieval Town and eating and enslaving people
• Banana Number One’s birth (he is green, naturally – scientific accuracy is so important)
• Banana Number One’s history as a race car driver, leader of a symphony/metal band, scientist, and lover.

Of course, Bananas Number One and Two are aided in their escape at the end of their story by the Bovine Baron Elite Guard.

Banana Number One is delightful because of just how bonkers it is. It builds this absolutely crazy world over the course of seventeen pages, and all I want is more of it. The only complaint I have is that there’s not nearly enough of this – it’s truncated for the presence of a B-story plus a preview of a third work (Re-Alligator by Robert Venditti, Manix Abrera, & Brockton McKinney).

The B-story is a black & white horror work in which 39-year-old Moira is unable to get over the disappearance of her twin brother Davey when they were both five. Davey returns and de-aging occurs, and maybe Moira didn’t get what she wanted from that. The ending hits the sweet spot of making you question exactly what really happened and what was in Moira’s head.

I don’t know if there’s any chance that Banana Number One is picked up or continued somewhere, but I would be absolutely delighted if that were the case. I can only imagine what further work with this world would entail and I’d love to see it.