Brightest Young Things

Spinning off from Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s comic Street Angel, Afrodisiac is a homage to the blaxploitation movies and comics of the 60’s and 70’s especially Candy Tangerine Man. It is the story of a pimp who from his headquarters Afroc protects the streets of Wilkesborough from all threats whether they are natural or supernatural, domestic or intergalactic.

Afrodisiac may have gotten his powers from Satan or from a magical pimp stick, Mackjolnir, or he was bitten by a radioactive, cigarette pimp, or Afrodisiac might be a robot that rebelled against his government creators. One thing is known for sure he is the baddest player in the game, the original, unbeatable, irresistible, smooth dark chocolate brother.

If you are a fan of blaxploitation movies and the comics of that era Afrodisiac is the book for you. Despite being a humorous comic it doesn’t treat the characters as cartoony buffoons. It is very apparent the Rugg and Maruca are big fans of the movies they are imitating, and they are not doing these stories ironically to poke fun at the originals. Rugg and Maruca are doing this because they want to share their love of this often-outrageous world.

The best thing about Afrodisiac is that it reads much like a greatest hits collection. Rugg uses many different coloring techniques, individualizing each story to appear that it is born from a collection of graphic comics. Rugg and Maruca have crafted snapshots into the life of their character making him part of a larger world giving him depth and a weight of history.

I highly recommend Afrodisiac; it is a fun read and a great piece of art.



Other comics by Jim Rugg coming out this year are One Model Nation written by Courtney Taylor of The Dandy Warhols and a comic based on the web series the Guild by the series creator Felicia Day.

Afrodisiac is coming out this month from AdHouse Books and will be available in finer comic and book stores around the nation.

For more info on Jim Rugg go to his blog

For more info on Afrodisiac go to the AdHouse site
There you can also download a pdf sample of the book featuring Afrodisiac’s fight with Hercules.