It Took Luke: Overworked & Underpaid – Mark Bouchard

Published: 25 October 2022
Publisher: Oni Press
Pages: 88
Series: It took Luke
Format read: Digital E ARC

Blurp:

LA, 2028. Down-on-their-luck exterminator Sal Hernandez is sick of long hours, living in their work van, and ready to reconcile with their estranged partner. The only thing standing in their way is one last shift. What seems like a routine job is anything but, and when a proselytizing mass of flesh abducts Sal’s newest coworker, Luke, an extermination job quickly turns into a rescue mission.

Freshly concussed from a pro-bono job earlier in the morning, for Sal, the line between reality and hallucination begins to blur. Sal and their teammates Molly and Hussam are as experienced as they come, but will it be enough to overcome the horrific creature that waits in the shadows and the incompetence of their boss?

Thoughts:

This was an advance reader copy given to me by NetGalley. The fact that it was free in no way, shape or form influenced my views on this book. I would like to say thank you for making it a possibility.

So, being almost Halloween when I requested this from NetGalley, the cover spoke to me. A graphic novel with a rundown person, being good at their job, not cliché at all right? While I am fine with the trope being overused, I did not feel that it took away from the overall story. There is some very confusing love story pandering in the background that I just blocked out as it took Luke also introduced me to gender politics and the pronoun phenomena taking the world by storm, dear God what am I but an ignorant ass.

Sal is not addressed as a he or she, but as they and them, now, bear with me, my English is not perfect, and I consider it to be my third language, but to see a person referred to as they them as a plural, just does my head in, especially because of the fact that I went to a primary school where corporal punishment was still allowed. For those that do not know what that means I will give a simple example. Teachers were allowed to beat children who were unruly and obstructing a class back in the day. By beat I am talking anything from getting one of those triangle rulers rapped over your knuckles that you had to hold out to the teacher or being smacked on the ass with a piece of wooden rod, with some teachers finding pride in showcasing a collection of them in a cabinet somewhere in class. Unruly and obstructing teaching was also loosely interpreted by some teachers as giving a wrong answer would also earn you a smack or three until you got the answer, literally beaten into you, the fact that you just did not get the sum or subtraction or multiplication tables was unacceptable, DON’T get me started on PI or Algebra… Same worked for English grammar, imagine if you will, little Dave sitting in class one day telling a teacher he saw a singular individual but referred to them as a they them, yeah, teacher would let me pick out which rod I would have liked to be beaten with worst of all, it does not matter why you would get a thrashing at school, if your parents found out, yeah, another beat down. Little Dave’s beatings at school can be counted on two hands at least still, ranging from getting disciplined with the flat side of a wood saw, an air hose, a tree branch that I had the honour of picking myself and getting a ruler broken over my knuckles, trust me when I say triangle rulers are not easy to break…. aaaah the good old days… I don’t understand gender fluidity and I think it is safe to say if it happens again in a novel or graphic, I will probably just pass it by, call me old fashioned…

All that said and done, I could relate to the Underworked and Underpayed side of Sal’s existence, I have been there in my life, I have also had relationship issues while being so deep down in a hole I just couldn’t get out of. The story is decent and the art was equally neat, with easy black and white stills and the only colour that was also prominent being red. Sal fights some pretty ugly monsters, amalgamations of The Thing and some other Anime nightmare I can’t remember the name of now, just look at the neat cover, you will get the idea. 

I had a decent time with it and it was short enough to not become a bigger problem or headache for me. I gave it a 3 out of 5 on GR and I can, I guess, recommend it to the newer generation and the pronoun gang. I see it has glowing reviews on GR, but for me it was just another average one.

Till next time.