Coming Soon: The Smartest Coach On Earth

“Rikki-Tikki-Deadly’s graphically inventive, wonderfully realized webseries follows the sad fortunes of an arrogant, hapless, football coach while touching on themes of abandonment, social isolation and despair within the sweeping depiction of Las Vegas’s transformation over the previous decade as professional sports become enmeshed with the city’s previously established gambling culture. In 2022, the abrasive, friendless former offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots receives a letter from a rival team’s eccentric, secretive owner, blithely and inexplicably requesting him to come and take over head coaching responsibilities for the Las Vegas Raiders. Deadly’s surprisingly touching story recounts their strange and pathetically funny efforts to revive a moribund franchise, invoking the emotional legacy of the original owner’s relentless pursuit of his vision of greatness while presenting a succession of Raiders blunders that gradually meander from comic to tragic and back again. The series is wonderfully illustrated in full color, and Deadly’s spare, iconic drawing style can render vivid architectural complexity or movingly capture the stark despondency of unloved children and their Sisyphean efforts to find success. – Publisher’s Weekly