Kid Lobotomy # 1 NM Quitely 1:10 RECALLED Gold Incentive Cover IDW Black Crown c

Description

Kid Lobotomy (2017 IDW) #1RIMISPRINT

Published Oct 2017 by IDW Publishing
The misprinted version of the Limited 1 for 10 Retailer Incentive Variant Cover
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Tess Fowler
Cover by Frank Quitely
28 pages, full color

Kafka meets King Lear by way of Young Frankenstein in KID LOBOTOMY, a dark, demented, monthly satire that follows a dysfunctional family of hoteliers. Will sibling rivalry, seduction, and shapeshifting eventually lead to sanity or salvation? Big Daddy is a rich hotelier who, in a cracked echo of King Lear, appoints his youngest descendant to manage The Suites, a peculiar hotel located behind the Black Crown Pub.

Affectionately known as Kid, his good looks and swagger can’t hide a rough childhood of strange therapies and brain operations that have awakened inner demons and psychodramas. This of course makes him eminently qualified to perform lobotomies. A failed rockstar/successful madman gets one last change to prove his worth-and regain his sanity-by turning the hotel that was once his childhood sanctuary into a lucrative business, despite a host of obstacles-including his own sister-who would love nothing more than to see him fail miserably.

Kid Lobotomy #1 Is Messed Up, and Will Mess You Up
As the launch title of IDW’s Black Crown imprint, Kid Lobotomy #1 by Peter Milligan & Tess Fowler is as weird and wonderful as you’d hope.

Kid Lobotomy, the first release from editor Shelly Bond’s new Black Crown imprint at IDW Publishing, is just as weird and wonderful as you might expect. Bond is a Vertigo alum, working there for two decades before stepping into Karen Berger’s shoes as executive editor from 2013-2016. Those of us who grew up on Vertigo comics know them to be dark, daring and devilish, and this spirit lives on in Kid Lobotomy. Co-created by Peter Milligan (Shade the Changing Man, Hellblazer) and Tess Fowler (Rat Queens), Kid Lobotomy is a comic that expects intelligence and curiosity from its readers. It mixes high culture — it has a classic literary unreliable narrator, and references The Metamorphosis and King Lear — with low culture — along with sex and body horror that Cronenberg would love.

Kid used to be a musician, your regular Williamsburg hipster with an electric guitar, until one night when he starts hallucinating and decides he wants to take up the harp. His whole life takes a turn that night. He’s still acting like a rock star — crazy, wild, half naked with Union Jack underwear — but he’s not a star anymore. He can’t function well enough to be one.

His father, a wealthy hotel mogul, tries everything to fix him: medicine, psychiatry, rest and relaxation — even some strange magical rituals — but nothing works. Until New Lobotomy. It’s more than just the science of removing parts of one’s brain, it’s a shamanistic ritual, it’s art, it’s — well, it’s cannibalistic, too. But it works for Kid. Kind of.

Kid becomes functional enough that his dad gives him the Suites, the family’s flagship hotel, to run. (The Black Crown comics take place in the same universe, all loosely connected through the Black Crown pub, just down the street from the Suites.) This causes all kinds of family drama. Kid’s sister had her own plans for the Suites that Kid’s now getting in the way of. And Kid makes the hotel into almost a hospital, where he shares the science of New Lobotomy with hotel guests. It helped Kid, and now he wants to help others.

Except Kid still hallucinates. He’s happier and more functional, and obsessed with the tool that treated him, but he still can’t trust anything he sees. And neither can we, as readers. What parts of this story are real? What’s just in Kid’s head? Does it matter?

Fowler is constantly changing her layout and breaking through panels. The most coherent or classical layouts are actually those when Kid is conducting lobotomies. Small precise panels that contrast with the chaos around them. Her linework is visceral and gritty, and she’s just as good drawing handsome men with rock star hair as she is at body horror and Kafka-esque bugs. There’s a beauty and a darkness to her illustrations. It’s distinctively Fowler and yet also feels unlike anything else she’s done.

Loughridge’s color work is fascinating. Each page has its own overarching hue, which then fades into the next page’s color, and the next. Fowler and Milligan made each page a distinctive storytelling unit — one scene, or one particular location — so the color works to solidify those breaks as well as connect those pieces together to form the longer narrative. It’s all fairly muted, which works to soften the aggressive content of the page.

Kid Lobotomy is messed up, and it will mess you up. It is most certainly not for everyone, but if you’re into the bizarre and the beastly, give it a try. It’ll be a hell of a ride.

Kid Lobotomy #1 Retailer Incentive Gold Foil Recalled Edition
Diamond Code: AUG170375 ; ISBN/UPC: 8-27714-01391-7-00141

Recalled3 Star Rating: Rare 101-1,000
Rare
This is the Retailer Incentive (RI) gold foil cover of Kid Lobotomy #1 with art by Frank Quitely (interior art was by Tess Fowler and the comic was written by Peter Milligan.

Kid Lobotomy #1 Gold Foil Recalled Edition
The variant was recalled and the text of the recall notice is below:

Due to a misapplication of the foil treatment, the copies of KID LOBOTOMY #1 10 COPY INCENTIVE (AUG170375) you received for on-sale today were misprinted.

You will be receiving corrected replacement copies in a future shipment (likely with product on sale November 1). IDW is asking that you return these misprinted copies as strip-cover returns.

IDW and Diamond regret any inconvenience. If you have additional questions regarding this advisory, please contact your Diamond Retailer Services Representative. Thank you.

Below is the replacement cover. This does not look like a misapplication of the foil treatment but rather a problem in the design of where the foil was placed as the replacement simply has the foil around the edges in stripes (whereas the recalled copies have the foil stamped over parts of the artwork).

CGC categorise the replacement copies as the Retailer Incentive Edition with “Partial gold foil cover”, the recalled copies are denoted as Recalled Editions with additional text stating “Recalled due to misapplication of gold foil”. At the time of writing (mid January 2018), the CGC census had 5 gradings in total noted in the census with 4 at the top grade of 9.8 (Near Mint / Mint).

Near mint, 1st print. Bagged & Boarded.