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It's always nice to see Kevin Eastman away from the New York sewers. In Drawing Blood #1, he and David Avallone tell an atmospheric thriller about an artist in crisis, well, multiple crises to be precise. Because when things are already going badly, bad things tend to magnetically attract even more bad things, so that things will soon go really badly.
Shane Bookman is a once celebrated cartoonist who had early success and has now been trying for years to...well, do what? To build on that? To do something new? Just do something to earn money? Or realize his creative dream? He probably doesn’t know himself.
But what he will know very soon: He’s kneedeep in shit...
The story about the artist in crisis, and about the gullible friend who is hit with a fist when his partner gets mixed up with gangsters and now has to find a way out, is not necessarily new, not too innovative on that level, the elements are familiar, maybe even already seen in similar combinations. But on a visual level, the creative team gets a lot right.
Ben Bishop captures the gritty, hard-boiled, cheeky city crime mood very well. The style and artists switching in the flashback (Bishop and Eastman) and hallucinations (Bishop and Troy Little) scenes are a great creative knack which brings even more dynamics to the already very spirited and surprising comic.
A lot happens in these entertaining 28 pages, visually and storywise. There may not be any new ingredients, but what Eastman, Avallone and Bishop have cooked up here tastes - thanks to a well paced storyline, unpredictability, charmingly black humor, cinematic dynamics and pointed dialogue - good enough for me to order the next course.
(You can subscribe to Drawing Blood at Walt's Comic Shop through Manage Comics. Simply click HERE)
Drawing Blood #1 (Of 12) Cover A Kevin Eastman
€6,50
SERIES PREMIERE KEVIN EASTMAN (TMNT) returns with a look into the roller coaster life of a successful comics creator. When you create a global franchise before you turn twenty... what happens next? Welcome to the world of Shane Bookman, a… read more
