Rex Royd Revels in Radical Restructuring of Reality

Imagine if Lex Luthor was about a million times smarter, and his avowed enemy wasn't Superman, but the reality that created Superman in the first place.

That's (maybe) the plot of REX ROYD, a disjointed collection of mind-f*cks from the mind of Frankie Boyle and Jim Muir. 

Rex is a businessman, CEO of Rexcorp. What the company does is hard to say, There's an indestructible superbeing who helps him, an unnamed British agent with a license to kill, and Eve -- the biblical Eve

The ostensible target is Proteoman -- the book's analog for Superman. Thing is, seems he dies a couple of different times in the book. And as for truth and justice, he seems to just fight because he exists.

Boyle states in the book's introduction, and then later on in the story itself, that REX ROYD was not supposed to make a narrative sense, but a poetic one. In that case, I suppose it's mission accomplished. It certainly evokes some of the sensibilities and high concepts of the works of Mark Millar (who pens the books foreward) and Grant Morrison from his INVISIBLES and DOOM PATROL days. But be aware upon entry that REX ROYD is an experiment in storytelling, and as such it doesn't so much defy normal conventions as remains completely ignorant of them. As such, for this reviewer, it's an unsastisfying cup of tea. It's cinematic foreplay replete with graphicus interruptus, and leaves one with a pondering of what the story could have been.