“One of these days they know they gotta get goin’ out of the door and down to the street all alone”
The Fillbach Brothers (Shawn and Matthew) have been making comics for a long time, but they’ve never worked for Marvel or DC and even not very much for some of the bigger indie companies, so they’re not as well known as they should be, which is too bad, because they’re really good creators. Their latest, which is the second volume focusing on the Illuminati Transport company, is a fun, wild romp through several dimensions. 
It is published by First Comics, for whom the Fillbachs do most of their work. Let’s take a look!
The first Illuminati Transport book came out in 2017, and you don’t need to read it to get this one, as each one is a self-contained adventure. Basically, it’s a trucking company that carries odd things in a world like ours, but populated with some supernatural/fantasy creatures like gnomes, fairies, and the occasional monster. Jim Kowalski, the star of these books, hangs out with Geech, his talking dog, and Rico, a sentient crystal skull. Wacky things happen to them. And now you’re up to speed!
The Fillbachs usually do comics that are somewhat wacky and irreverent, but one of the cool things they can do is turn on a dime, tone-wise, and they do that a bit in this book (they’re not the only creators who can do this, of course, so I’m not saying it’s a unique ability). For the most part, this is a weird adventure. Jim gets a job transporting a typewriter … which happens to have the ability to warp time and space and open up dimensional portals. Of course! He gets a look at the dude who tried to use it, and the Fillbachs do a wonderful job with a full-page spread showing why this is a bad idea. Jim has to stop for the night during transport, and the town in which he stops has gone a bit odd. Eventually, of course, things go to hell, and it’s clear someone is trying to use the typewriter, which sends Jim and his cronies off to a bunch of alternate dimensions. We’ve already met the head on the cover (which talks … and smokes), a dude with a banjo, and an ill-behaved armadillo, and all these elements will come into play. 
Jim has to retrieve the typewriter and set things right before the world ends. So, fairly standard superhero plot, but filtered through the Fillbachs’ wonderfully oddball sensibility. Jim has to figure out who to trust (beyond his dog and his skull) and what everyone’s agenda really is, and he has to fight a bunch of monsters in the meantime. It’s tough being a trucker for Illuminati Transport! In the end, they come up with a fairly clever and somewhat novel solution (although, if you know the Fillbachs, it’s not hard to figure out who’s going to save the day). It’s an exciting, often funny, and often heartfelt adventure. There’s nothing wrong with that!
The art is, of course, a big draw when it comes to Fillbach comics, and that’s the case with this, too. Over the years, their line has become a bit softer as their inking has become more mature, and the art on this book is stunning. They still have a nice, cartoony style that fits the gonzo plots they come up with (mostly; some of their best work is very serious, and the art works well there, too, although there is a bit more of a tonal shift with those comics), but they temper it more with better spot blacks, more delicate brush strokes, and a very good knowledge of negative space. They change line weights really well to show different modes of “being” in the book, from heavier lines when Jim and his cronies are fighting monsters to slightly lighter lines to show Geech’s fur or quicker motion of the characters. 
They drop more holding lines than they used to, which also makes the art “lighter” to a degree and makes it a bit more fluid (even though, unlike a lot of artists, the Fillbachs never seemed to have too many problems with fluidity). Their designs are terrific – we get gigantic fighting bears, people twisted like pretzels, oozing, many-tentacled monsters, and an almost hippy golem. When Jim and his friends get stuck in the fog, the characters and their surroundings are rendered in an almost pointillist manner, creating a wonderful sense of a world lost in the haze. This is an amazing-looking book, and it’s very dense, too, so it’s nice to linger on each page and see what the Fillbachs are doing panel-by-panel.
I’m not sure it’s the Fillbachs’ “best work yet,” as Joseph Michael Linsner gushes in the pull quote on the front of the book, but it’s still an excellent and fun comic. It certainly won’t let you down if you’re looking for a wonderfully drawn, rollicking adventure, and who doesn’t like one of those once in a while? It does not appear to be available on Amazon, but it seems you can get it on the First web site, so head on over there!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
