American Barbarian
A deliriously deranged post-post-apocalyptic revenge saga from Tom Scioli— Jack Kirby meets Robert E. Howard meets Chuck Jones in a world of robosaurs, mutant biker gangs, and undead cyborg pharaohs.
📖 IDW Publishing • Started 2010
American Barbarian is what happens when Tom Scioli takes everything he loves about comics—Jack Kirby bombast, Robert E. Howard grit, Chuck Jones slapstick—and grinds them into a single, glorious, post-post-apocalyptic cocktail. Launched as a webcomic in 2010 and later collected by IDW Publishing, it remains one of the most wildly unbound works in Scioli’s career.
The year is far, far in the future. Civilization has risen, fallen, risen again, and fallen again. What remains is New Earthea—a shattered continent where robosaurs (robotic dinosaurs) patrol mutant-infested wastelands and the undead scheme from their thrones. At the center of it all stands Meric, the red-white-and-blue-haired American Barbarian, the last American. His family was destroyed by Two-Tank Omen, a half-tank, half-mummy, cyborg-pharaoh monstrosity. Now Meric wants revenge.
What follows is a 256-page epic that Scioli serialized online before IDW collected it into a gorgeous hardcover (with an introduction by Rob Liefeld—who called it exactly what it is: “a masterpiece”). The story shifts gears constantly, careening from Kirby-esque full-page splashes to experimental watercolor sequences to photo-collage montages. Scioli himself has said the book is “a distillation of everything I love about the comic book medium and its history, especially the tawdry bits.”
And you can taste every one of those bits on every page. A single splash shows Meric climbing through a techno-fortress with over 70 drawings of the barbarian at various points in his assault—like a Family Circus dotted line drawn by a supernova. Zombie biker gangs. Mutant motorcycle marauders. A hatchback hero car. It’s all here, delivered with the kind of unhinged creative freedom that only a self-published webcomic can uncage.
The complete collection includes a bonus “American Barbarian Apocrypha” section packed with process art and behind-the-scenes material. The full story remains free to read at ambarb.com.
Perfect for fans of Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, and anyone who’s ever wondered what would happen if the King of Comics designed a world where the future is even weirder than the past.
Created by Tom Scioli.
