The Holy Roller

Levi Coen may have been the reigning “Paperboy” champion at his local bowling alley, but he left that behind years ago because bowling and his champion dad were terminally uncool.  Now he lives the high life on the seas, smoking up and saving whales for Greenpeace.  Until he gets word that his dad is and returns home to Clovel, Ohio, to make amends only to find that it’s under the thumb of the powerful Henry family and their Neo-Nazi minions.  It’s then that Levi realizes that it’s time to stop running from the past, embrace his heritage, and save his town as the bowling-themed vigilante known as The Holy Roller!

Sounds pretty ridiculous, right?  “The Holy Roller” isn’t the product of one writer’s fetid imagination, but three:  Rick Remender, Andy Samberg, and Joe Trohman.  Looking at that lineup, and after reading the comic itself, it feels like Remender did most of the heavy lifting in terms of writing and plotting, Samberg brought the jokes (and likeness for the main character), while Trohman… brought the Jewishness?  I really couldn’t say, but what matters is that the end result wasn’t as entertaining or funny as I was hoping.

There are definitely some funny bits here, usually stemming from how Levi really does feel like a whacked out Samberg character (from his SNL skits or Lonely Island songs) in comics form.  Yet despite the absurd bowling superhero vigilante setup, the series is still determined to still keep one foot in reality with its father/son drama, the threat represented by the Henry family patriarch, and the fact that Nazis just aren’t as funny as they used to be – even if Holo-Hitler does get what’s coming to him in the end.

Roland Boschi does a serviceable job on the art, mainly because he’s committed to playing things straight.  While that works for the bits where the story gets very silly, it allows the dramatic bits to bring things crashing back to Earth.  Boschi previously worked with Remender on “The Scumbag” which also had a comedic bent to it that I didn’t find all that funny.  This isn’t as bad as that one was, but I’d only recommend it for committed fans of the one real comics writer here and only after you’ve read through his better stuff.