Hello there! Greetings from last Thursday! Hopefully my entire country isn't on fire as you read this! If it is, I hope you are in a different, less insane locale. Today's selection is two comics, each with overly lengthy titles!
Sheriff Dale isn't too pleased to find Lucas didn't get scared off by the vampires eating a drunk in the jail last night. The sheriff explains over morning beers that his brother, the former sheriff, caused all this by making a deal with the vampires to avoid dying of cancer. Well, when your job doesn't provide adequate health insurance. . .
Lucas makes a deal with the sheriff to wipe them all out, but when he gets down to the last one, the sheriff cracks him in the head with a shovel. 'Cause the last one's his brother. So the question is, which way is this double-cross running? Do Lucas and the sheriff want Jack to think he's got things in hand, or did the sheriff trick Lucas? I'd suspect the latter, but the sheriff sounds like he's always played second fiddle to his brother. Jack was sheriff first, Dale dated Jack's wife first, but she married Jack instead. Now Dale's sheriff, but Jack and his vamps are the ones who really run things. Maybe Dale'd like to get his brother out of the way once and for all, be the big man.
I'm curious if the townspeople live with this because they don't see another option, or because the vampires are friends and family, and they'd rather have them alive in this form than not at all. Is it fear that makes the town close ranks rather than seek help, or a sense of community? "He ain't heavy, he's my vampire brother."
Cavalcanti still has a lot of panels that seem to zoom in real close on a character's face. I don't really know why. If it's meant to be dramatic, it's not really working. Because most of the time, there's a layered meaning to what they're saying, but since we don't know all the mysteries yet, it just seems strangely ominous. Like one of those parody horror movies where the creepy weirdo says something like, "I make a steak that's to. . . die for." with really heavy emphasis on die and the other characters are like, "OK, great, weirdo."
The fight scene in the cave between Lucas and the horde of vampires was kind of fun, if brief. For a moment I thought the blood on his arms was matching the pattern of his arm tattoo, but no. I do wonder how, if the vampire can protect himself from the sun by pulling up the hood on his sweatshirt, his hands aren't burning? They're not covered. The mysteries of vampires are legion.
Winston Wallis was a cop, now he's a private investigator. He's also the last human left, the rest of the planet inhabited by people that look like ogres or insect people or whatever. he ends up in the middle of a crime scene run by his old partner, Raleigh, who would like Winston's help. Apparently, three years ago, a colossus was murdered, and something bad happened when Winston and Raleigh tried to solve the case. Three years to the day, another colossus turns up dead in the exact same spot. Why that spot is in Carson City, Nevada would seem to be the biggest mystery. Perhaps the rest of the world is a barely inhabitable wasteland, except Nevada is already that in our world sooooo. . .
Oh, and the newest victim's wife, a lovely blue lady named Jacinda who implies Raleigh is a bent cop wants to hire Winston to find her husband. Well, he's right there on the cover of this comic. Another case closed! Top that Sherlock Holmes.
The comic seems to be narrated by Winston's assistant, a little pink thing who looks like he's missing an eyestalk named Floyd. Floyd's writing a book, and plotting Winston's doom so he he can be reunited with somebody. Unless that's just literary license. A disgruntled employee releasing his frustration through revenge fantasy stories. Which means I don't know how seriously to take all the stuff about how Winston's like all the humans were, and can't help tearing things down. The perspective could be a little slanted, you know? Granted I'm not clear on if all these other folks used to be human, or if the other humans are all dead and were replaced by these folks. Or how long any of this has been this way. Questions for another day.
Ferguson's art has a bit of Mike Parobeck or Rich Burchett in it. Most notably with Jacinda, but also with most of the non-Winston characters. Straightforward designs, sort of the Star Trek alien approach. Different people distinguished by colors or having a couple of horns or a fin on their head. Clean strong linework, some cross-hatching in the close-ups, but not to a distracting degree. Winston's a little rougher looking, but he's the outlier in this world, so that tracks. I don't know if the others age like humans, slower, faster, or what, but Winston's clearly meant to be getting on in years. Gets worn out running and fighting more than Raleigh.
I'm curious to see if the rainbow-colored blood is going to be a consistent thing. They use it on the cover, and again at the crime scene in the beginning of the book. If it is blood. Maybe it's saliva.
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