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American Barbarian: The Complete Series
Revenge is a dish best served BOLD! Follow Meric, the red-white-and-blue-haired American Barbarian on his quest to defeat the post-post-apocolyptic zombie cyborg mummy overlord Two-Tank Omen. This is the complete Saturday Morning Epic from the artist and co-writer of Transformers vs G.I. JOE and the Eisner Award-nominated Godland. Also includes an introduction by Rob Liefeld.
268 pages, Paperback
First published April 17, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
July 11, 2020
When his family falls to the forces of Two Tank Omen, Meric swears revenge and wages war on his enemies as... The American Barbarian!
My wife grabbed this for me for my birthday. I was a fan of Scioli's Fantastic Four: Grand Design so I figured I'd backtrack into his back catalog.
Scioli flies his Kirby flag high on American Barbarian, an homage to Thundarr, Kamandi, Devil Dinosaur, and the Fourth World, among other things. Scioli's art is heavily influenced, as is his writing, for better or for worse. This feels like a lost Kirby work, complete with character names containing puns, like Two Tank Omen, the Pharaoh with tanks for feet.
The story is s a post apocalyptic barbarian revenge story infused with as much Kirbyness as it can hold. There are cosmic aspects, dinosaurs, robots, cursing, bloodshed, time travel, and lots of barbarian action. 'Nuff said.
American Barbarian is bursting with bombastic Kirbytude. Four out of five star swords.
My wife grabbed this for me for my birthday. I was a fan of Scioli's Fantastic Four: Grand Design so I figured I'd backtrack into his back catalog.
Scioli flies his Kirby flag high on American Barbarian, an homage to Thundarr, Kamandi, Devil Dinosaur, and the Fourth World, among other things. Scioli's art is heavily influenced, as is his writing, for better or for worse. This feels like a lost Kirby work, complete with character names containing puns, like Two Tank Omen, the Pharaoh with tanks for feet.
The story is s a post apocalyptic barbarian revenge story infused with as much Kirbyness as it can hold. There are cosmic aspects, dinosaurs, robots, cursing, bloodshed, time travel, and lots of barbarian action. 'Nuff said.
American Barbarian is bursting with bombastic Kirbytude. Four out of five star swords.
August 20, 2013
Remember kids’ cartoons from the 80s and 90s? If, like me, you grew up in this era watching shows like Thundercats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Bravestarr, and so on, you’ll remember them fondly. Maybe the nostalgia for these shows has made you go back to revisit them as an adult – and if so, then chances are you re-watched the shows with a grown-up’s mind wondering what the hell you were thinking when you first saw this rubbish and thought it was good!
American Barbarian is like one of those shows. Writer/artist Tom Scioli was a child of this era and his book is basically a paean to those incredibly imaginative but badly written, nonsensical shows that filled up Saturday morning TV schedules. It’s also a tribute to other pop culture touchstones of this era like Star Wars and Mad Max, and of course Jack Kirby’s Kamandi comics, and maybe it’s the Kirby illustration style Scioli emulates that makes the connection between this book and 80s cartoon shows stand out so sharply.
The story is daffy in a charming way – Meric is our hero, the American Barbarian, who has red, white and blue hair (!) and bears a strong resemblance to Thundarr the Barbarian, even down to wielding a shimmering sword. When fighting an Egyptian-looking villain whose two feet are tanks (!!) called Two Tank Omen (like Tutankhamun, geddit?), Meric’s many brothers and father are killed. Devastated, Meric sets off on his quest to revenge his fallen family on a colourful adventure across the bizarre post-post-apocalyptic (!!!) American landscape.
It doesn’t feel right to critique this comic on the writing and story like I would most other comics, mostly because that isn’t really the point of the book. Narratively speaking, the story is all over the place; the characterisation is corny as hell; the dialogue is predictable and flat; based solely on this, the book is a dud and is the reason I compare it to those 80s cartoons. Watching those TV shows now, the dialogue is ridiculous, the stories make no sense, and so on, but we loved them once, bad writing and all. It’s the art I love so much in this book, and the knowingly over-the-top silliness of the story that gives Scioli the opportunities to draw such amazing pictures, just like the great character designs, landscapes, and stories from shows like Thundercats and He-Man.
That and the presentation of the book is really something. Though it started out as a web comic, it’s nicely bound in a lovely hardback and the pages smell great and feel high quality. It’s books like this that make me choose print over digital because you’re getting a tangible work of art for your money as well as the comic itself.
But I can understand readers who didn’t like this book – like I said, it really is a case of style over substance. At numerous points in the story, I not only didn’t know what was going on but I didn’t care either. It’s basically all about the great art and the references, which would be fine if this were a painting, or a series of paintings, but it’s not – it’s a comic and therefore needs a strong narrative that grips the reader, and oftentimes a good script, and frankly it possesses neither.
American Barbarian is Tom Scioli’s imagination, uninhibited and unbridled, let loose on the page and the result is a glorious mess. If you can get past the weak writing, and you’re a fan of Kirby art and 80s/90s cartoon TV show craziness, you’ll get a lot out of this one.
American Barbarian is like one of those shows. Writer/artist Tom Scioli was a child of this era and his book is basically a paean to those incredibly imaginative but badly written, nonsensical shows that filled up Saturday morning TV schedules. It’s also a tribute to other pop culture touchstones of this era like Star Wars and Mad Max, and of course Jack Kirby’s Kamandi comics, and maybe it’s the Kirby illustration style Scioli emulates that makes the connection between this book and 80s cartoon shows stand out so sharply.
The story is daffy in a charming way – Meric is our hero, the American Barbarian, who has red, white and blue hair (!) and bears a strong resemblance to Thundarr the Barbarian, even down to wielding a shimmering sword. When fighting an Egyptian-looking villain whose two feet are tanks (!!) called Two Tank Omen (like Tutankhamun, geddit?), Meric’s many brothers and father are killed. Devastated, Meric sets off on his quest to revenge his fallen family on a colourful adventure across the bizarre post-post-apocalyptic (!!!) American landscape.
It doesn’t feel right to critique this comic on the writing and story like I would most other comics, mostly because that isn’t really the point of the book. Narratively speaking, the story is all over the place; the characterisation is corny as hell; the dialogue is predictable and flat; based solely on this, the book is a dud and is the reason I compare it to those 80s cartoons. Watching those TV shows now, the dialogue is ridiculous, the stories make no sense, and so on, but we loved them once, bad writing and all. It’s the art I love so much in this book, and the knowingly over-the-top silliness of the story that gives Scioli the opportunities to draw such amazing pictures, just like the great character designs, landscapes, and stories from shows like Thundercats and He-Man.
That and the presentation of the book is really something. Though it started out as a web comic, it’s nicely bound in a lovely hardback and the pages smell great and feel high quality. It’s books like this that make me choose print over digital because you’re getting a tangible work of art for your money as well as the comic itself.
But I can understand readers who didn’t like this book – like I said, it really is a case of style over substance. At numerous points in the story, I not only didn’t know what was going on but I didn’t care either. It’s basically all about the great art and the references, which would be fine if this were a painting, or a series of paintings, but it’s not – it’s a comic and therefore needs a strong narrative that grips the reader, and oftentimes a good script, and frankly it possesses neither.
American Barbarian is Tom Scioli’s imagination, uninhibited and unbridled, let loose on the page and the result is a glorious mess. If you can get past the weak writing, and you’re a fan of Kirby art and 80s/90s cartoon TV show craziness, you’ll get a lot out of this one.
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July 26, 2020It's no surprise to find a Tom Scioli comic where the pitch is pretty much 'What if Jack Kirby were actually any good?', but this post-apocalyptic odyssey didn't grab me like his work usually does, possibly because it's riffing on Kirby's DC output like OMAC and Kamandi, characters in whom I'm not nearly as invested as I am the Fantastic Four or the Transformers. Hell, I'm barely as invested in Kamandi as I am the sodding Go-Bots. Then too, the beauty of prime Scioli like Transformers Vs GI Joe is that someone is being allowed to go this crazy with the real characters, rather than analogues. I mean, anyone can do weird shit with analogues – I genuinely couldn't count the number of warped Superman riffs I've read, and even the best of them (Supreme!) never quite hit as hard as All-Star Superman. Although on the upside, not having to worry about licensors does mean Scioli can have a freer hand with the language, such that instead of Kamandi's Great Disaster, the end of civilisation here came about with the Great Clusterfuck. "It wasn't caused by any one thing going wrong. It was everything that went wrong. Every nightmare you could imagine happening all at once." Which, you know, checks out. And this in a series from 2012, when the world still looked vaguely like it might conceivably be OK! So yes, there are still fun bits here, of course there are. No comic featuring the line "My father often told me of the kindness of the dinosaurs he'd encountered" could be all bad, and the villain of the piece is classic Scioli – a giant pharaoh with tanks for feet, called Two-Tank Omen. But a lot of the other characters look like knock-off action figures you'd find in a pound shop (most pronounced in the case of the hairy Buu-Chaka), and ultimately it feels more like a hint of future glories than a solid piece in its own right.
August 20, 2015
"Give it up, Two-Tank! You're surrounded by dinosaurs. Your empire is crumbling around you!"
If you've a thing for campy sci-fi and fantasy movies, you won't want to miss this book. It has robotic dinosaurs, it has homemade black holes, it has immortal nomadic scientist women. It has real dinosaurs, it has pharaohs with tank feet, it has a barbarian with red, white, and blue hair. It even has multiple "Star Wars" jokes, as if nothing could make it better. Tom Scioli's Silver Age-inspired style and bold, vibrant colors top off this exciting and goofy epic. American Barbarian is equal parts "Conan the Barbarian" and "Danger 5", one of the most fun and original comics I've read in a long time.
If you've a thing for campy sci-fi and fantasy movies, you won't want to miss this book. It has robotic dinosaurs, it has homemade black holes, it has immortal nomadic scientist women. It has real dinosaurs, it has pharaohs with tank feet, it has a barbarian with red, white, and blue hair. It even has multiple "Star Wars" jokes, as if nothing could make it better. Tom Scioli's Silver Age-inspired style and bold, vibrant colors top off this exciting and goofy epic. American Barbarian is equal parts "Conan the Barbarian" and "Danger 5", one of the most fun and original comics I've read in a long time.
April 19, 2020
Scioli manages to merge to the nostalgia to the id of those who grew up in the late 70s through the early 90s. Jack Kirby style world-building and madness, Star Wars and 70s pulp aesthetics, and tons of similar adolescent boy power fantasies. The plot isn't entirely coherent but it doesn't feel like it's supposed to be either. Scioli adds jokes and references to let the reader know he is self-aware about the madness.
April 22, 2012
Completely ridiculous and over-the-top story, but an awful fun read!
January 7, 2019
Totally amazing art and color. It's a great homage to cartoons from the 80's and the work of Jack Kirby. It was fun to see how much Tom Scioli loves Kirby's work. The action scenes are great. I also really liked the ambiguous ending. It's up to the reader to decide what happened.
The down side is that it's kind of a boring read because it's so stereotypical Kirby. It's a comic straight out of the 70's. It reads kind of like an issue of Kamandi. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but it makes the book feel kind of stale.
I think it's also worth noting that the binding of the book is VERY tight. It kept taking me out of the story because I was so aware of holding the book open. Not the fault of the author, but it does effect the reading experience.
The down side is that it's kind of a boring read because it's so stereotypical Kirby. It's a comic straight out of the 70's. It reads kind of like an issue of Kamandi. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but it makes the book feel kind of stale.
I think it's also worth noting that the binding of the book is VERY tight. It kept taking me out of the story because I was so aware of holding the book open. Not the fault of the author, but it does effect the reading experience.
October 12, 2021
By now Tom Scioli has carried his familiar Jack Kirby pastiche past pastiche, into nervy new territory, and American Barbarian, a sort of crazy quilt of Captain America and Thundarr, has enough insinuating humor and formal inventiveness to make me smile. This is one of those books that seems poised between parody and po-faced homage, and gets by on sheer gusto. The brute sexism of the story-world seems sincere enough, though, and there's something a bit disquieting about the recrudescence of such values in Scioli's new model Kirby. Maybe that's intentional? Certainly the book is so over the top that it short-circuits criticism on grounds of logic or verisimilitude.
July 7, 2012
Great silly fun. This is part Thundarr the Barbarian, part He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, part Star Wars, part Fire and Ice, all done as if it were channeled through Jack Kirby. The art looks like a 13-year-old did it trying very hard to imitate Jack Kirby, and for some reason I don't mean that in a bad way because for some reason that means my eyes never get tired of looking at it--there is always something interesting, shocking, funny, or amazing on every page.
May 12, 2013
This book blasts away with Kirbyesque enthusiasm from page 1...but it never feels like a watching a tribute band. Scioli's worked beyond that impulse. The Kirby style is just the vocabulary that he's chosen, and he tells his story with all the grandeur and bobbast that entails. Exciting and hilarious, with an almost childlike intensity. All killer, no filler.
September 17, 2016
For as influential as Jack Kirby is, I've rarely seen someone channel his energy so directly and successfully as Tom Scioli. Recommended if you like: OMAC, Kamandi, dinosaurs, tank-men, barbarians, and Saturday morning cartoons.
January 2, 2018
Equal parts Saturday Morning Cartoon and Count Of Monte Cristo, a fantastic journey for grown ups who want to romp through the imaginations we had as children. I felt like I was playing with my action figures the entire time!
May 30, 2012
A weird and wonderful Jack Kirby riff. The villain is Two-Tank Omen, a pharoah with 666 on his forehead and and tanks for feet. 'Nuff said.
August 22, 2012
Kirby-esque Fun in this sci-fi romp that seems to be part tribute, part spoof and part visual indulgence.
Weird and wonderful, (just not very deep.)
Weird and wonderful, (just not very deep.)
September 11, 2015
Good stuff. Visually interesting. Very He-Man. I liked the retro designs and weird stuff in it. And the page layouts were really cool.
November 17, 2023
I already respected Scioli's work but this one was a beautiful, extreme upside surprise. An overlooked classic for sure, up there with Morrison/Weston's the Filth as a meta-textual, culture-binging psychological character study. On the surface this is a Burroughs-style many layered cultural cut-up of 70s and 80s sci fo pop culture. Basically, everything culturally that would have been going through a young, imagnitive boy's head circa the early 1980s. But Scioli also has these striking moments where he brings out the reality of various violent acts and steadily deconstructs the personality and history of his main character. And his sense of visual and story-telling rythmn is first rate. In this regard, he is one to study closely.
April 14, 2022
Everyone keeps saying the American Barbarian is like reading Jack Kirby is he were good. I have no feelings about Jack so I'll say American Barbarian is like Hannah Barbara if they were good.
I honestly picked up American Barbarian for the second time so I could read it and get rid of it. Thing is I love everything about this hardback release except for the story... Which really makes the hoarder / collector in me want to keep it. Then I re-read it and I think the story / story telling is actually good and very intelligent.
American Barbarian rules.
P.S. I'm feeling a little guilty ripping through so many graphic novels, as it seems iffy counting them towards my 50 book year goal...
I honestly picked up American Barbarian for the second time so I could read it and get rid of it. Thing is I love everything about this hardback release except for the story... Which really makes the hoarder / collector in me want to keep it. Then I re-read it and I think the story / story telling is actually good and very intelligent.
American Barbarian rules.
P.S. I'm feeling a little guilty ripping through so many graphic novels, as it seems iffy counting them towards my 50 book year goal...
June 27, 2022
(6/10): I really love the 80's cartoon homage driven, Jack Kirby-like pop-art of it all. However, that's as far as it goes for me. To preface this, I did not grow up in the 80's so I am already not connected to the homages to cartoons like He-Man and Thundercats it was going for, and I feel like that's all this comic has going for it especially with little to no substance it has. I really wanted to have fun with the homage it was going for, but it rarely refuted or built upon the homage it was going for so I was left with something that feels passionately dated. Despite everything, the vintage art was great to see and some of the 80's cartoon cheesiness was a little fun.
January 14, 2019
Pure, unadulterated, brilliant camp. American Barbarian, the titular, eponymous hero, has his entire family murdered by the villain Two Tank Omen, and so he carves “REVENGE!!!” into his fingertips so he never forgets what his mission in life is. Then the book gets weird, and nuts.
The comic is a love letter to GI Joe, He-man and good old fashioned 1980s machismoistic jingoism.
The comic is a love letter to GI Joe, He-man and good old fashioned 1980s machismoistic jingoism.
March 21, 2021
Another total knockout from Scioli. I think this one captures the same Saturday Morning Cartoon energy that his Transformers vs. G.I. Joe aims for much more succinctly. The layouts are a little simpler to follow, but the characters have a little less depth as well. All in all, this is is the Tom Scioli book I'd recommend to the reader who had never read him if I wanted to convert them.
December 19, 2018
Tom Scioli brings us a visually stunning and zany story in the vein of Thundarr the Barbarian and Masters of the Universe. From the improbably coloured hair to the pun-tastic name of the villain this graphic novel is non-stop frenetic action. Great fun!
March 18, 2018
A send up of Jack Kirby, mostly his Kamandi character with DC. The artwork and story are totally Kirby inspired, and done well, with plenty of humor added to it. A fun read.
July 22, 2020
DPL hoopla. Nope. Not really a fan.
January 2, 2021
This book is nuts! I loved every page of it.
May 2, 2022
Amazing. So fun.
October 12, 2022
Tom Scioli puts his love for all things Jack Kirby on full display. It's fun, but it does go on for a little too long. There are times where I feel this is much more of a parody than an homage.
August 27, 2023
Awesome.
November 27, 2025
A heart-on-sleeve, inspired by popular media, comic book wonder! I loved it, and if it were a bit more polished, it'd be perfect.
December 9, 2025
Bonkers.
Jack Kirby meets the 80s animation era. Scioli has a childlike feel to his work and I mean that in the best way possible. It feels like a kid playing with action figures and toys, creating a wild story.
I love the foreshortening he uses, it feels like Kirby/Ditko, but cranked to 11.
Jack Kirby meets the 80s animation era. Scioli has a childlike feel to his work and I mean that in the best way possible. It feels like a kid playing with action figures and toys, creating a wild story.
I love the foreshortening he uses, it feels like Kirby/Ditko, but cranked to 11.
October 30, 2016
More accurately, 3.5 stars...this is weird, wild and wonderful. Scioli is throwing out ideas like they are going out of style. Clear influences include Masters of the Universe, Kamandi, Thundarr the Barbarian, Star Wars, and I'm sure a hundred others I'm missing. Having seen his more recent SUPER POWERS work, it's clear his art has continued to be refined since this volume, but this is still enjoyable nonetheless. I'd love to see Scioli on a FANTASTIC FOUR reboot or, as I've oft tweeted about, a GAME OF THRONES style DC UNIVERSE book featuring Raan, Thanagar, Exxor, Mogo, Tamaran, Gemworld, Apokolips, Korugar, and Transilvane. Your mileage may vary here, but I found this to be delightful.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews