Kevin and Todd are best friends, and like many little boys, they get bored one day and discover the joys of playing with dead animals. They make a game out of it, and it eventually escalates to killing small creatures, then killing bigger creatures. When it gets up to dog level, Kevin realizes that what they’re doing isn’t right, but Todd wants to move on up to even bigger game. Since Kevin was the one who came up with the game in the first place, Todd bullies him into helping (at least for a while) by threatening to tell everyone how the game was all Kevin’s idea.

So yeah, not the most original plot, but it does have an EC comics kind of charm and the story is told really well. The art is clean and atmospheric, and the creators do an excellent job of actually telling a story with the illustrations. Given the number of mainstream comics today where the art is secondary to the dialog and expository text, it’s nice to see a creative team that actually understands that comics are different from novels. Overall, A Friendly Game is very well done, especially for a debut graphic novel.

A Friendly Game was created and penciled by Joe Pimienta and written, inked, and lettered by Lindsay Hornsby. Lauren Affe did the tones, and James Hornsby provided additional lettering. The book is published by Slave Labor Graphics. You can find more information on the SLG web site at www.slgcomic.com.