TRVE KVLT #1 ADVANCE REVIEW: a tasty fast food combo meal, with sides of violence and horror

Writer/Co-Creator: Scott Bryan Wilson, Artist/Co-Creator: Liana Kangas, Colors: Gab Contreras, Letters: DC Hopkins.

TRVE KVLT (pronounced True Cult) from IDW Comics will feel very familiar to anyone who has worked in the fast food industry. From the jaded manager who has worked at the same restaurant forever, to the longtime employee with the over-inflated sense of worth, to the rare worker who sees the restaurant as a higher calling…they are all represented in TRVE KVLT.

The fast food restaurant that is the setting of this series is called Burger Lord, a not subtle knockoff of Burger King, complete with a vintage magenta, purple, and gold color palette by Gab Contreras. Gab’s colors are bright while inside Burger Lord, and subdued when something serious is happening. And, as these fast-food colors are meant to do sub-consciously, I desperately wanted a Whopper and fries after reading this.

At first, I felt the art by Liana Kangas felt simplistic and rushed-looking, but as the issue moved along, the style felt perfectly suited for the subject matter, a fast-food version of art. Contreras’s colors elevate it to Pop Art.

The plot centers around a disgruntled, longtime employee named Marty, who is looking for a break from the boredom, and to let out his mounting frustrations with his life by doing something daring, illegal, and stupid, even though he thinks he is a criminal mastermind.

The title of the book becomes more clear at the end of issue #1, when some of the people that Marty has wronged come to collect what belongs to them. I’m not sure a book and storyline focusing on this religious cult would hold my interest, but it does pique it enough to return to issue #2 to find out. Or perhaps TRVE KVLT refers to the cult of fast food workers. In that case, I can definitely relate.

TRVE KVLT #1 from IDW Comics releases today, August 17, 2022 at your Local Comics Shop and digitally at IDW Publishing.