Writer – Simon Furman
Artist – Jose Delbo
Inker – Mike DeCarlo
Colours – Nelson Yomtov
Letters – Janice Chiang

A lab is broken into by some men dressed up like clowns and a gorilla with an armoured exoskeleton is stolen. Randall Pierce, the scientist that was working on the gorilla, almost quits with his experiments as he was already on the fence about doing so but instead, is swayed not to and finishes them up by creating a team of armoured animals which he calls Brute Force. Their mission is to retrieve the gorilla before he can do any harm which is far easier said than done. Simon Furman handles the writing chores on this miniseries, the man more than familiar with robotic-type characters and he not only gives the reader a fair balance of action and drama but also tries to inject some humour into the proceedings, all of it coming from the newly cognizant animals as they try to figure out everything about themselves and everything around them. None of that humour is anything that will make a person laugh out loud or even think about it two minutes later, it is all just a little silliness that helps to make light of the situation and move things along at a decent pace. The book also has a bit of a Captain Planet vibe, that being a story that deals with the ecosystem and nature and so forth and that is not a bad thing as most comics tend to shy away from storylines that feature such. As the tale moves along and Brute Force begins to track down the gorilla, they find it in the rainforest where a greedy corporation is clearing vast swaths of the land for profit. It is a tale that sadly mirrors real life and so it resonates to this day even and it is fun to see what a group of sentient animals wearing armour might do to prevent that. Tackling the artwork is Jose Delbo with a bit of an assist from Mike DeCarlo and the two do a pretty fair job of it, the pencils in line with most of what had come out during the 1980s which is not a knock, simply a style that is immediately recognizable. By the end of the book, the team has failed to accomplish their mission which is not unexpected and it leaves things on a cliffhanger as the villains of the book now have their own animal-in-armour army. It looks as if at some point, if not the very next issue, they are going to have it out which visually, should be quite entertaining. Fun stuff no matter how one looks at it.

3 out of 5