PopSyndicate.com

Review by Darke Raven

College. A great place to pick up members of the opposite (or same depending on your sensibilities) sex, get drunk, develop an overtly sensitive passion for the local college sports team (or just the hot cheerleaders supporting said team) and… oh, yeah… maybe pick up a college education while your at it.

Since it looks like Rockstar Games didn’t sell enough copies of Bully to justify Bully : The College Years, maybe you’re just looking for something to fill the sad gap in your life left out by that lacking video game sequel. Maybe you’d like to get, say, a comic set in the lifestyle of college life, since actual hentai dating sex sims about such things are hard to come by and only exist as Japanese Imports for the PC sold at a small handful of import stores who have not bowed their spines down to the religious right. Yeah.

Well if you’re considering this over, say, the far better written Aoi House from Seven Seas then you are making one sad mistake. If the cover of the comic alone isn’t enough to give you pause about the lackluster contents then you might as well find out what awaits you within the “hallowed” halls of Silent Devil’s Super Frat : Rush Week Collection.

Sure, while the concept of “Drink Beer, Get Laid, Fight Crime”… what? Fight Crime? You kidding me? Uh… well, while all that might seem like an ideal concept for a comic set in a frat house, it never really gels into anything more than a collection of we’ve seen it all before situations that, well, we’ve seen before and seen done better than this. If the image of what I guess is a bastardization of Jim Belushi from Animal House in the inside front cover wasn’t additional warning that this title is going to blow, I had to strain my neck reading the askew tilted sideways pages of this title, which may look good and all on print but sucks when you’re reviewing a copy on Acrobat Reader… yeah, I really needed this pain in the neck to go along with the pain in the prostate that this title was. Thanks Silent Devil!

There exists on the campus of Rysemore U (so named because 9 out of 10 actual real Universities would have sued the hell out of Silent Devil for using them in their comic) there exists a secret fraternity of the super powered, so empowered thanks to a strangely “obscure” meteor that fell into their presence and yet somehow managed to remain unspoken of… or people were just really drunk that night and didn’t pay any mind to it happening. Anyway this “secret” Frat house, which sticks out like a sore thumb and probably can be spotted from Earth orbit, holds powerful slackers who use their power for ill will, badly done seen it before humor, and other stuff. What other stuff? The stuff you’re going to have to endure if you were actually buying this title, that’s what!

- The first five pages (not counting the intro page) are spend on bodily waste management humor, including a joke that probably would have only gotten airtime on South Park… maybe. It didn’t sing though so it might have required music lessons before South Park accepted it (or a Simon Cowell reference).

- Page upon page that somehow starts as a superpowers topic and then turns into something about sex, then a giant rampaging neo-nazi skinhead bot and then there’s a beer run that goes not so well and… how many pages out of my existence did all this take out of my life that I could have spent reviewing something better?

- X amount of pages later, after the defeat of the neo nazi bot, two topless girls at the beach appear in one panel… you know if you’re looking for naked women you’d be better off over at Icarus Publishing than here. They stay naked longer, and there’s actual sex involved.

- Oh, then there’s this whole drawn out sequence that involves an on campus “disagreement” which somehow merit’s the calling in of Homeland Security, and detention of X amount of the book’s cast for being “enemy combatants” or whatever… at this point I gave up caring about the title, and so should you.

- There’s more past the Homeland Security bit, one more, but by now you should have become disgusted by this title and not want to read another page… which I have done too much of for my own good.

- Oh, and Silent Devil said there’s MORE of this stuff on their site… no, no, no thanks, I think I absorbed more than I humanly can of this title. Thanks.

- Oh, and two short pointless sexual fan services that don’t materialize well, or work well.

That’s it. Quickly let’s get right to the breakdown… before my neck sticks like this.

Super Frat the Breakdown

Let’s face it. If all it takes to make a best selling comic about college frat life is lots of badly done we’ve seen it all before humor, cussing, swearing, hoeing out women like sex objects yet delivering little “fan service” in this direction (even in the actually tasteful yet naughty way it was done at Aoi House) and so forth then by god do we have a winner here… which we don’t. Aoi House may be about an all female sorority of Yaoi fans but at least it’s fan service was abit more potent and had abit more oomph than this title, and it didn’t replace actual humor with foul language and did it before (to the point of being gross at times) humor that we’ve seen 101+ times before.

With all the intelligence of a drunken college dropout, Super Frat is about as interesting as watching Girls Gone Wild videos. It’s good enough and passable but eventually you’ll want something better (like, I don‘t know, No Man‘s Land lesbian erotica videos).

Sure in theory this really should have rocked it out better, and maybe might have had that spark to really score a better score if it was done just right. I mean how can a twisted askew super hero meet Animal House parody with all the right fan service served up pipping hot be so wrong? In theory it should have hit it right out of the park and made an impression, in theory. However theory goes right out the window when we start with said touch of Animal House that is a touch more of an insult to Animal House than a tribute for starters. Sure, I guess someone who did this title was possibly inspired by Animal House to do this, but it falls short and just doesn’t reach the level of iconic culthood status that Animal House has achieved through solid creation and followthrough. Readers we’ve known Animal House, no doubt we’ve watched Animal House, and this title is no Animal House.

That being said there are far better humor titles out there, and titles with far more “fan service” for the buck to boot (which is another failing of this title). No, I‘m not expecting half naked women every 3 pages but abit more rounded fan service in more than one way (which again would have honored Animal House instead of degrade it) should have been the order of the day with this title. At best it’s a shallow wading pool of poor frat humor that really needed to have been crafted better, at worst it’s an insult to Jim Belushi and the rest of the Animal House fraternity. Crude crude humor over actual humor, fan service which doesn’t deliver a full monty of goodness, and stories that last too long and just drag on to the point that you stop caring what happens next (the thing that involved the Neo Nazi bot somewhere in the story and the Homeland Security one comes to mind) drags this title down, and makes it something to avoid.

Long story short (I know, I know, too late) I’m sure there is someone out there who will actually dig this title… somewhere… but you’re going to have to aim low for an acquired taste on Super Frat because the title aims lows and hits you in the groin for 2 “The Power of Jim Belushi Compels You” Super Frat Exorcisms out of 5… Now begone from my sight, Silent Devil! I need a few painkillers for the pain in my neck and butt I got reviewing this!

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