I've gotten to know Doug TenNapel's work through his graphic novels for kids, including his most recent Bad Island. It's fair to say I have become a fan of his work. This year he also serialized his first webcomic, Ratfist, which will be collected in a print edition to be published by Image this December. Clocking in at 150 pages, Ratfist shares a lot with his all ages work, but in other regards is completely different.
It's about the adventures of a superhero of sorts named Ratfist, although we are introducted to him as he is about to retire (or at least say goodbye to his partner, a rat) in order to propose to his girlfriend Gina. Since we don't get to see his actual adventures beforehand, I'm not entirely sure he's not just a deluded guy who liked wearing a costume and has a pet rat.
There's much less coherent world-building going on in this story than what I've come to expect from TenNapel -- it has much more of a, "yeah, let's throw that in too!" feel to its disparate elements which range from angels to aliens (tiki-aliens) to time travel to science fiction. It looks like TenNapel's having fun with the comic, but for me it doesn't really hang together as a convincing world. Part of the problem to me was the introduction of TenNapel himself as a character which doesn't seem to serve any real purpose other than to emphasize the fictional nature of the story we're reading.
