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Pounded is a nice little miniseries that came out several years ago. It's a bit of a punk comedy in the vaguest sense of punk.. more like a parody. Regardless, it's a fun little series written by Brian Wood with art by Steve Rolston. It also holds the distinction of being one of the few comics to have an official soundtrack released, I'll get to that later.

The set up! Heavy Parker is a trust fund kiddie living in a swank penthouse apartment filled with all sorts of expensive goodies, not to mention his tricked out land rover. He also happens to the be in a band and is sort of the "King of Punk Rock" in his city, picking and choosing from young naive scene girls. Unfortunately for him, his philandering ways are about to bite him on the a** in the form of his ex, Missy Cheung.

Possible Spoilers











Missy is a young naive high school, goes off the college.. and well.. you can see where this is going. Heavy being the a*****e that he is cheats on her as soon as she's out of site. She finds out, and four months later she's back with revenge on her mind and she's not alone. See.. Missy ended up as an art student in NYC, and she comes back with five stereotypical hardcore NYC punks, imagine the guys from Biohazard but angrier and you're pretty much dead on. What ensues is the story of Heavy getting his comeupence and his attempt to reclaim his apartment, his following, standing, and some level of respect.

We may as well get the bad bit out of the way.

Heavy Parker is a complete and utter a**. He barely qualifies as a loveable a**, most of the humor comes from watching him get what he deserves. He's a rich d**k head who has no sense of the history of punk music or the scene. As Wood puts it in the back of the book, he's the a*****e poser that anyone who grew up in a scene knew but everyone tolerated because he was generous with his money. That's pretty much him too a tee. Unfortunately he's such an a*****e that the ending leaves you feeling cheated because.. well.. he kind of comes out on top, and after watching him s**t all over his ex and in general act like a d**k, you really don't want to see him come out on top.

The humor in the book mostly comes from him acting like an a** or getting smacked around and revealed as an a*****e. The NYC guys tearing his apartment to bits, Heavy haveing verbal circles run around him during an interview (my favorite bit in the book), and just him acting like an arrogant a*****e in general. Yeah, it's kind of "ick" when he sniffs his fingers after removing a condom from a round with a goth girl (she squeaks which is vaguely cute) but at the same time it has that "Ewww..hahaha" thing going on.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, the ending is a little unsatisfying. I guess we're supposed to believe that Heavy learned his lesson and some how redeemed himself, but I still wanted him to get dumped on some more. I suppose Wood kind of wrote himself into a corner here. Heavy was the main character, and it was a comedy, so ending it with him in the gutter or something wouldn't really work, but the ending there is just feels a bit.. eh. Ah well..

Missy Cheung on the other hand... aside from her revenge kick, which is completely justified, she's pretty damn loveable and sweet. In fact, rereading this after all this made me think of another young asian girl who got mixed up with an older man.. Knives Chau! I now demand a Knives Chau/Missy Cheung crossover series, they can sit around talking about their ex's being assholes and share creative ways at getting even with them or something, it'd sell millions, or at least the one copy I'd buy.

The collection itself is dirt cheap, $9! And for that you don't just get the three issue miniseries, but a nice set of extras. Some character sketches, a short snippit of the original proposal, a cover gallery, the four or five online comic strips that originally ran on Oni.com and a few other nice bits. Not too shabby if you ask me.

As I mentioned before, it also has a soundtrack CD out. It's a nifty compilation style CD from Springman records and includes groups such as Pain, The Eyeliners, The Mr. T Experiance, Bigwig and more. On top of that it has some nice CD rom features, including the original Oni.com strips in glorious color and some other stuff. The liner notes even come with a short little "Heavy Parkey, what is punk rock to you?" strip. Fun stuff.

All in all it's one of Wood's lightest works to date, but it's still an entertaing and fun read.

Links of interest:

Steverolston.com

Onipress.com

Springmanrecords.com