That urge to jump into the comments of someone's else blog and call someone an idiot never goes away entirely, at least not for me. It is nice to know I've developed enough to control to resist the urge.
James' attempt to have sex is interrupted by his kickboxing friend, who we learn is named Dem, getting in a fight in the club. They go hang out with some guy who buys weed off Dem and talk about stuff before the other guy shows he has some sort of power, too. James gives a little speech about how these powers affect their lives and they have to deal with it. I don't know, it's kind of dull.
In other, more interesting developments, there's two pages on a guy with the last name "Collins" who is investigating people with these powers, including the girl with the acid barf from last issue, who has disappeared. More pages are devoted to the guy on the cover, named Mason. He's a hatchet-wielding cannibal serial killer, and his favorite food is the kids with powers, who he can sense somehow. Here, he gets a young boy with a kind of frog tongue.
Falzone does the page where the kid tries to use his tongue to get to the ceiling, so the boy's leg is outside the panel, in a white space. Mason grabs it there, and then there's one more panel to the right, an extreme close-up on the boy's tearful face, pleading to be let go. But the way Mason is drawn, it leads to the bottom of the page, where Mason swings the kid's head into the floor. It's a pretty solid composition.
There is one strange thing. The last page, at least in my copy, is the same one as last issue. Where the teleporter is standing over the acid barf girl. The one who is missing now. Not sure what happened there.
If Vivenzio is going to continue to focus on James and Dem, then they need to start doing something other than moping around and complaining about not getting laid. Because at this point, every other plotline we've seen so far is much more interesting than they are. I'm guessing one of these three forces - Mason, Brunner or Tom - are going to cross paths with James, and that's how he gets drawn into this. Force himself to decide if he's content to just 'live with it.'
Dooley's an Irishman caught up in the Civil War who digs up a live woman from a grave. The woman is Constance der Abend, and for a decade, they travel the U.S. Dooley helps Constance who, surprise!, is a vampire, find people to feed on who are evil, while Constance acts as a lady of society and possibly a professional opera singer. But there are people who know she's a vampire, and they burn her house to the ground, along with the dirt from where she was born. So Dooley's got to get her back to that place. They reach a town called Sangre de Moro, but the hunters are waiting.
The issue is written from Dooley's perspective, and he's presented as a man who is loyal to his mistress, but he's starting to feel the toll. Serving Constance saved him from the war, but as he notes while peering into a beer Farrell colors like blood, it's still him deciding it's OK to take these lives because they're immoral. He alternates between this downtrodden weariness, Terry giving him exhaustion lines and deep shadows swallowing his eyes, or else a wide-eyed horror at the things he's a party to.
Which makes me wonder if he's going to reconsider his allegiance at some point. It probably didn't help that Constance, badly burned from her failed attempt to save her coffin, comments that if she doesn't get fed, she might even eat him. Get the feeling Dooley hadn't entirely considered that outcome. That, push comes to shove, he could also be nothing more than food to her.
Seeley and Campbell also highlight one possible supporting cast member in the town. The sheriff, who also writes stories about the West. So dime novels, like Beauchamp in Unforgiven? Either way, we'll see if Sheriff Abilene (and that name sounds fake as all hell) does play some sort of role. If he's the type to maintain law and order, or only sheriff because someone has to pin the badge to their shirt.
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