Review: RICK AND MORTY FINALS WEEK: BRAWLHER #1 (2 of 5)

The second issue of Rick & Morty’s ‘Finals Week’ series has landed on the shelves of your local comic shop, and while a month may have passed in our human world, it’s only been a single day in the Mortyverse, and with that day comes a whole new field of study.

Morty’s non-euphemistic plans to spend a quiet Tuesday brushing up on his Gender Studies are interrupted when the whole family gets sucked into a cursed Gamestation 5, where they are forced to play as characters in a hell-themed video game. The male members of the family find themselves trapped inside a fiery pocket universe of masculinity, armed only with a poorly cooked turducken to defend themselves, while Summer and Beth (mostly Summer) fight their way through level after repetitive level of demon bros in search of some kind of meaning. 

Christof Bogacs’ writing has a refreshingly simplistic attitude about complex gender dynamics, while remaining focused on the fun of battling for survival against the forces of evil. Rick and Morty spend a lot of this issue’s 40 plus pages having pointless arguments inside a flaming orb – Jerry, while present, offers very little to the situation. The devil is also there, going full ‘sigma’ and bringing out the absolute worst in Rick.

It may be Morty’s Finals Week, but this issue is a straight-up Summer vehicle. As mother and daughter battle their way through the video game, Summer has some truly excellent quips, including my personal favourite – ‘It’s time to cuck these cucks.’ She fully gets what it means to be a video game character, and she’s really good at it. Maybe even too good at it.

Beth has a lot of time to observe Summer as she kicks demon ass, and she doesn’t like what she sees. Maybe it’s all the shit she’s seen on various adventures with Rick, maybe it’s just being a teenage girl subjected to the tedium of modern youth, but Summer is most certainly not ok. She would much rather dispatch wave after wave of lil’ devils than engage with the pointless hamster wheel of reality. Beth sees that Summer will grind for as long as she’s trapped in the game, smashing bad guys, eating simulated steaks and feeling a sense of purpose. Whatever resultant existence that may arise from that purpose is irrelevant. Summer sees herself as self-reliant, Beth is afraid she’s becoming dangerously detached from her feelings. “BrawlHer” doesn’t fall back on any easy answers, either. Beth might be able to shoot murder beams from her heart while inside the game, but back in the real world, she knows she can’t fix Summer, or even do anything demonstrable to help her – all she can do is be there if and when Summer chooses to reach out for support. 

Beck Kubrick’s art style also has a deceptive simplicity to it that compliments the story’s outward absurdity and interior sweetness. Kubrick is able to infuse an outsized amount of emotion into each character using very few details, especially Summer and Beth. There are also some great, full page Sailor Moon inspired ‘empowerment transformations’ in this comic that I would buy a second copy so I could cut them out and frame them. Pairing Kubrick’s sketchy style with a ton of bold choices by colourist Meg Casey gives the pages ‘BrawlHer’ the look of a pile of homemade Valentines Day cards from a classroom in the mid-90s. It’s a distinctive and powerful vibe.

Kubrick also drew the semi-realistic portrait of Summer that graces the cover of this installment of ‘Finals Week,’ which will, from now in, be what I think of when I picture her in my head. The other two variant covers, by James Lloyd and Marc Ellerby, respectively, are both great – Lloyd depicts Summer fearlessly taking on a bunch of Gromflomites, and things continue to get weird with the magenta Morty monster in the second panel of Ellerby’s continuous cover spectacular!

Near the end of ‘BrawlHer’, Morty flippantly says that he can fake his way through Gender Studies by just writing down the details of the events that just transpired, saying that “the teacher will assume it’s all a convoluted metaphor about gender roles and toxic masculinity and junk,” which means we can all rest easy, academically, until next month’s issue of ‘Finals Week’!