Mister Negativity and other tales of Supernatural Law

Mister Negativity and other tales of Supernatural Law by Batton Lash

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Like The Vampire Brat, Mister Negativity is more of the same from Mr. Lash, but in this case, "more of the same" isn't a bad thing.  He still manages to combine horror, humor, and the law, most of the time to near-perfect proportions.  There are a few misses in this collection, but the hits are so on the mark that it's forgiveable.  The title story is about a man with an attitude so negative that he begins to repel everything around him, and "Words Don't Do IT Justice" is told with only a few sentences; most of the dialogue is written through illustrations in word balloons.  It shows off Lash's talents well.

The humor is still evident, though never forced, and some of the stories here are littered with puns (although, maybe "littered" isn't the right word to use, since I like puns so much).  I was struck, though, with how well Lash writes parodies.  In the review for The Vampire Brat, I said something about the stories being satirical, but I was wrong; I confused satire with parody, and really, most of the stories are parodies of other pop culture phenomena.  There's an excellent (and scathing) parody of Dave Sim's Cerebus, and the collection ends with a brief story about Steven Gink, a horror writer in a coma after being struck by a van.  That much of the story is written in narrative similar in style to Stephen King only reinforces the parody, and makes it that much more humorous.

Chronologically, this collection follows The Vampire Brat, but both collections gather together the comic books from the most current run of issues.  There are some references in both collections that I didn't get, but they didn't detract much from the flow of the stories.  It does encourage me to read the rest of the series, so eventually the overarching stories will make sense to me.  I don't think it would hurt to read these out of order, but if you can read them in order, it would probably be more beneficial.  As it is, though, I still recommend the series to anyone who likes horror, humor, and puns.