Wrapping up the last of August's stuff with a pair of first issues. Did either of them light my world on fire? Spoiler alert, not really. Did either of them do enough for me to buy issue 2? Let's find out.
The book appears to be trying to establish Summer City as a place with larger forces, unseen but felt, at work. Four different characters make reference to the city being cursed, or doomed, or a place you need to escape from. Only one of them, a cop, seems to think that can be changed at all. The others feel resigned to the notion their lives are failures. They're all drawn with slumped shoulders and awkward expressions, rumpled clothes. People just dragging through life, definitely not winning. von Gorman makes lips very prominent somehow without making them the focus, oddly pursed or almost blow-up doll lips. It's kind of distracting.
The Pedestrian (though he's never called that) is a silent, inscrutable figure. He shows up to help a potential mugging victim, to help a pizza delivery person parallel park, and saves a kid from getting run over by a drunk (or possessed) teacher. Esposito never has him talk, and von Gorman keeps him expressionless. Most of the time he seems to be looking over the other characters' heads (and his eyes are hidden behind goggles, before he speedwalks away. He does have a home, but what we see is sparsely furnished.
He returns the mugger's wallet to him, but also tipped off the cops that the guy was the mugger. We don't see the end result of the officer's visit to the man's apartment, though the mugger certainly thinks he's screwed. There's also another figure, who wears a mask with a big red hand (the Don't Walk symbol) over it, who appears briefly, and is somehow connected to what that teacher did.
Other than the cop, I'm not sure if any of the non-costumed characters are significant. The delivery girl dropped out of pre-med, the schoolkids are new in town and struggling to fit in. The almost-mugger and his almost-victim are both lifelong residents that couldn't get out. Are they our windows into a struggle for the city's soul, or were they just one-offs to demonstrate how The Pedestrian works? It's all a big mystery, though I wonder if it wasn't played as too vague in an attempt to be mysterious.
Jack Russell set up shop in the castle that appeared in the Rocky Mountains in the Werewolf by Night one-shot from last year. He's got a little life building there, working as ferry captain, contributing to poetry slams in town. Too bad all the Blood Hunt stuff, and the emergence of the Moon at some point, seems to have driven him mad and made him kill a couple of locals. By the time Elsa Bloodstone shows up, investigating reports of a murderous beastie, Jack's shackled himself up in the basement, waiting to starve to death.
Unfortunately, Elsa's Bloodstone, which is colored glowing purple instead of red, somehow triggers another transformation. The two of them fight a bit, Elsa being much more restrained than I'd expect, even allowing that she doesn't want to kill him, kick him in the face a few times. She does subdue him, and now they'll try to figure out what's going on, because Jack admits the scent at the scene was off from his own.
In other plot threads, some group of loser mages are trying to figure out a new plan after the Blood Hunt thing went sour, when who should walk in but '90s Ghost Rider reject villain Deathwatch. Loo is nice enough to offer a little expository dialogue explaining this guy's powers. And he's working with, oh geez, The Hood? *drops head on table in defeat*
Jed MacKay did us all a favor when he killed the guy, and then Benjamin Percy just had to bring him back as a damn Spirit of Vengeance. Loo references the latter storyline, though not why Parker Robbins head isn't currently on fire. But at least he's trying to explain how these characters are in their respective positions and relationships, rather than trusting everyone's read everything these folks have appeared in recently. Anyway, Hood's got a couple of magic trinkets to empower the losers so they'll follow he and Deathwatch, and help them collect the pages of the Darkhold.
I don't know why this needed the "Red Band" label. There's no violence here that's even on par with what I've seen in various Deadpool comics. It wouldn't even reach the level of the Ennis and Steve Dillon Marvel Knights Punisher stuff, let alone the MAX imprint. We don't see Jack's two friends attacked, only the aftermath, and while there's some ribs visible, Davila and Sinclair mostly make the insides look like spaghetti with too much sauce.
Also, Davila draws Jack's wolf form with more of a gorilla face than a wolf-face, which I don't like. The nose is not prominent, the snout non-existent. Werewolves should have canine heads, like on the cover!
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