Sweaty Review

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Before diving into the writing of the piece proper I want to first mention what a great direction the visual style took under Farel Dalrymple. I felt sort of soggy just looking at the art which, considering it's subject matter, is quite apt.

As to the story: I thought it was, to coin an oft used super villain phrase, "sheer elegance in it's simplicity". It's a well known fact that nothing screws a child up like their parents and Moist is no exception. His father's obsession with normalizing his boy and his mother's unwillingness to step in and stop the madness, indirectly leads to Moist's super villainy ways. What's so wrong with a child being dry anyway? What does that even mean? Dry? Lesson to parents: don't try to fix it if it aint broke.

It's not the moisture that is keeping our titular hero down (though I'm sure it doesn't help). No, it's the weight of the shame he feels that his parents never accepted him. It makes sense that he'd only seek solace from a sex chat line. Nothing reeks of desperation quite like feeling like the only way to get someone to care about you is to pay them to.

That's what brings Moist to Dr. Horrible. The bad Doc represents someone reviled but, rather than crawling under a rock, he fights back. Even when Horrible loses to the corporate tool, Captain Hammer, his point is made: tis better to fight and lose than never to have fought at all. The moment is transformative to Moist. We all have that great rebel who first captured our imaginations and made us realize that rules were made to be bent, if not broken entirely and so it is with Dr. Horrible and Moist.

What I love best about this series is that there are no true heroes or villains, just rule makers and those who challenge authority, creating a kind of balance. Moist is an excellent addition and I hope that this won't be the last we hear from him.