Post Malone's Big Rig #0
Created by: Post Malone
Written by: Malone and Adrian Wassel
Art by: Nathan Gooden
Letters by: Jim Campbell
Cover: Gooden and Der-shing Helmer
CCO & Editor-in-Chief: Wassel
Released: May 3, 2025
After ranking my 10 most-wanted issues for Free Comic Book Day, there was little question what would be featured for the next #FreeComicFriday.
“Post Malone's Big Rig” #0 was easily the most intriguing of the bunch, with a concept so crazy I just had to see it in action, even if I wasn't convinced I would like it. I said I didn't know where it would fall on “a scale of insanely brilliant to disappointing sacrilege.” Now, having read it, I can say... it's definitely somewhere on that scale.
It opens with a couple of splash pages laying out a relatively straightforward setup: demon hordes are attacking Europe in the Middle Ages and a secret sect of the Knights Templar called the Six Petals* are seeking a holy weapon to turn the tide.
As two crows fight over an eyeball, the inhabitants of a village flee in terror from what one little girl calls “devils.” One of these creatures stops staggering long enough to snatch an eyeball up and eat it.
This feels like a minor detail to get stuck on, but it's hard to tell if it's a human eye or a demon eye. Seems a little big. And while I don't think the answer to that question is vital to the story, it's the first of many examples where I have trouble following Gooden's striking and moody black and white art.
The townspeople rush to a church where a monk giving Foggy Nelson vibes welcomes them in, only for a nastier priest to tell them God will protect them before descending into a cellar and slamming the door behind him. The demons soon enter the church, and it's clear the holy setting isn't protecting those huddled within. As we hear but thankfully don't see them being tormented, the grumpy priest goes to a basement room where other priests are chanting, presumably in Latin, and draining blood from a goat.
One of the demon things bursts into the blacksmith shop and starts taunting the family and John, calling the latter “a former man of the cloth” and suggesting he was once a part of the secret sect down in the church basement. The demon tells them no divine help is coming, but seems taken aback when the little girl prays for an angel to intervene.
Cut to a meteor striking the village. When the smoke clears, there's the big rig. Any opportunity to imagine a triumphant, organ-and-choir-backed version of “East Bound and Down” playing evaporates as John emerges from the rubble and we see the dead hand of the little girl sticking out, rosary dangling from her wrist.
Grumpy priest has been sliced in half and is rambling about the archangel Michael, but he's soon overcome by the demon that had been taunting John. John takes a break from inspecting the truck to smash the animated corpse's head with a hammer and utter a profanity that I didn't think was around in the Middle Ages, but one thing I'm not going to Google is the etymology of curse words. I don't want to think what kinds of ads that will generate.
The demon warns John there would be “no turning back” if he put on the cap sitting on the truck's dashboard. As more of the formerly living surround the vehicle, John puts on the cap on and is transformed into...
“Trucker, Deliverer of Vengeance.” There's a two-page splash that includes those words, as well as John running through the horde and splashing their innards and bodily fluids everywhere. But, uh, I decided not to share that.
Apparently the demon who's been doing the talking is Azag, ninth prince of Hell, and I'm happy to say I don't know where that puts him in the infernal pecking order. John – or is he Trucker** now? – drives toward a castle and then a big demon mouth and appears to get the rig stuck. But then someone or something cuts off Azag's head.
After an interlude where the crows from the beginning are identified as Beelz and Bub when they return to Hell and their mistress Lucifer, who seems very interested in the Trucker, we find John smoking a cigarette and turning on the windshield wipers to reveal … a witch named Edda and her associate, who is holding the sword that decapitated Azag. Edda says she's keeping Earth from being overrun by Hell – “That is what you Christians call it, right?” – and calls the rig their best weapon against the hordes. And from there it's to be continued.
Clearly, I didn't love it as much as I'd hoped. I'm not even sure I liked it all that much. But... it hasn't lost me just yet.
It came close. I don't have a problem with some of the priests being portrayed as cold or uncaring; goodness knows Christians aren't anywhere close to perfect and enough of us have demonstrated that to earn such a characterization at times. But the horrific mayhem visited upon people by the demons wasn't balanced by much.
The most gruesome images happen to the demons themselves or the already deceased. But to have the focus on the mother and her children and then to see them unceremoniously wiped out... I'm not sure what purpose that served. Shock value? Sure. If Malone and Wassel want us to understand that certain rules won't be followed and these demons are relentlessly vicious, OK, mission accomplished. But for all the horror, the only ray of hope we get is that this mysterious guy can drive a magic truck real good, and he's met some witches who kill demons. Cool visuals and all, but what good does it do to save the world if you can't save some people along the way?
Now, this is probably just an excerpt from the first installment of the story, so maybe there will be more beyond the good guys killing the bad guys worse than the bad guys kill the villagers.
While I didn't expect this to be a scripturally accurate story, I was disappointed there was barely a hint of divine intervention despite all the Christian imagery. There may be more to come on that score, or it could be that she just happened to pray right when the Six Petals' dubious ritual kicked in. If John is someone who seemed to fail in his calling but gets a second chance by being faithful even when others falter, that could be cool. Or perhaps the writers want to see evil splattered but don't think Christianity is the way to do it. Maybe they're suggesting that Christianity is an empty exercise and there are other powers at work. That's their prerogative – but also not a story I want to read.
It's too soon to judge completely, but this is not a comic I'll be adding to my pull list. It is one that I'll probably check out through the library or on Hoopla, and I'm willing to be proven wrong, maybe even to the point that I'll wish I had bought the early installments. I almost bailed on “Irredeemable” two pages in, and I had to take breaks from “Walking Dead” installments. But both of those had story and characterization that overcame the awful events inside. If “Big Rig” can manage something like that – and portray faith in a way that may not be orthodox but at least isn't disrespectful or dismissive – I could shift gears.
* - I probably wouldn't go advertising my sect either if I hadn't come up with a better name than that.
** - Not the most striking name for a character, but then, I'm a fan of an X-Man named Maggott.
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