Sloth Review

Sloth HC

"Sloth" is brought to us by Gilbert Hernandez, most known as a a co-creator of Love and Rockets along with his brother Jaime.

Sloth is all Gilbert, written and drawn. It begins, centered around Miguel Serra, who recaps the typical life of an average teenager stuck in a low-maintenance town, the suburban kind that's slow; good for the elderly, and for those wanting to raise children.

It turns out that the fate of teenagers is not a pleasent one. Miguel is also troubled by his mother's abandonment of him, and his father's incarceration for drug peddling, so in hopes of escaping reality, Miguel wills himself into a coma.

One year later, he awakens, and apperently, things are exactly the same as he left it.

He still has his girlfriend, Lita, and their friend Romeo, whom all three form the band "Sloth". Do you get it? The band is "Sloth", and the book's called "Sloth", do you get it?

But there's more. Miguel's motor skills are not exactly up to speed, suffering from a year long break, so he's moving slower than usual, but that doesn't really seem to play a factor in the book. He's slow, see, and sloth's are slow, and the book is called "Sloth."

Still here?

It turns out that his girlfriend, Lita, had a fling, with a boy from another school while Miguel was out,....but that doesn't seem to play a factor into the book, either. Miguel does suspect something is wrong with Lita, but for some reason he drops the issue, but the stress causes friction with Romeo.

Lita drags Miguel and Romeo into a hunt for the Goatman, a mythical being that is capable of switching lives with someone at will, and he haunts an old lemon orchard.
The primary visits unearths a shocking recording on the camcorder on their way out of the lemon orchard.

Romeo begins distancing himself from Lita and Miguel, there's a group of thugs that have issues with Miguel for reasons never explained, and then, after a return visit to the lemon orchard for further proof of the Goatman's existence, the swerve happens, and the story stays the same, only told somewhere else, and after a few pages, it happens again, and then it ends.

As a reader I was left with an itchy brain. So I scratched the perplexed organ and said, "Wha-huh?"

The art is well done, with the black and white dynamics played and mixed well. There just seemed to be alot going on in the story that was dropped for the sake of finding an ending, and not a concrete one at that. The dialogue falls into the same traps as other coming-of-age books do, referring sequences of a characters actions to being stuck in a movie, not having clue one about the actions of their parents, or grandparents (in Miguel's case). I just feel that every time I read a book about teenagers, it's the same teenagers, speaking the same language, stuck in a mind surrounded by the same confusion.

"Sloth" was not a bad read, far from it, but there really wasn't anything new offered, and it seemed much was sacrificed in order to meet the deadline and page limit.

If you appreciate Gilbert Hernandez, stick to "Love and Rockets"; check out "Sloth" if a paperback is offered for less. The hardcover is twenty bucks, so if you are a die hard Hernandez fan, it's worth it.