EDITOR’S NOTE: Consider this a friendly heads-up to readers of this blog. I often receive advance review copies of upcoming titles. As time permits, I’ll read them and share here only those books that I feel are worthy of your attention and should be pre-ordered to ensure you can get a copy. In most cases, comic shops won’t put in a large pre-order for these books simply because they can’t gauge the popularity or favorable reception of first issues from smaller publishers. That means you need to act ahead of time and give your comic shop an advance order. The final cut-off date for Issue 1 of UNDONE BY BLOOD is this Monday, January 20. I think once you see this for yourself, you’ll want the whole mini-series. You’ll need to order Issue 2 before the final cut-off date of February 24. You’ll be able to give your comic shop an order for the remaining issues (from the Previews catalog) from March onward.
P.S. Thanks to Zac Thompson, with much appreciation for sharing this comic with me.
UNDONE BY BLOOD (or THE SHADOW OF A WANTED MAN) #1 (Aftershock Comics, February 12, 2020 scheduled release date) Zac B. Thompson and Lonnie Nadler, writers. Sami Kivela, art. Jason Wordie, colors. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, letters.
UNDONE BY BLOOD #2 (scheduled release date March 18, 2020)
If you enjoy crime comics and stories of revenge, you’ll want to pick this one up. And, if you’re a fan of western comics you must be starving for new ones in that genre, so this could be your lucky day. Revenge is a popular theme in both crime and western stories, but UNDONE BY BLOOD promises a different twist. The first two issues deliver on that promise in a big way by giving us two gritty tales of revenge in a single title.
In a November 2019 article in The Hollywood Reporter, Zac Thompson said that both he and co-writer Lonnie Nadler were excited about the series “because I feel like it’s been ages since we’ve had a proper Western in comics. We’ve gone full Coen Brothers, full Sergio Leone, and the town of Sweetheart feels lived in and chewed up."
Writers Thompson and Nadler employ a dual narrative to tell a story within a story. In 1971, Ethel Grady Lane returns to the small town of Sweetheart, Arizona by announcing to the patrons of a sleazy saloon that she’s “here to kill the man who murdered my family” one year prior. In the Arizona of the Old West, cattle rancher Solomon Eaton has to return to his former gunslinging outlaw days when a gang shoots his wife and abducts his son.
Issue #1 opens with an excerpt from a western paperback, The Shadow Of A Wanted Man, which introduces us to Sol as he herds some escaped cattle back to his ranch. Transition to 1971 where Ethel is reading the same paperback on a bus ride to Arizona.
The story transitions between past and present in clever ways, usually shifting the timeline through a similar device or image. As Ethel buys some rolling papers for cigarettes, the next panel shifts to the past where Sol is lighting up his homemade cigarette. Later, Sol rides out in search of the outlaw gang as we transition to Ethel’s scene where she rents a bike and hits the road to begin her investigation.
The art by Kivela is very cinematic and breath-taking. His choices of large versus small panels and their placement on the page is inventive and creates a visual flow that moves the story along. Many pages contain no dialogue or text, allowing the art to tell the story. The superb color work by Wordie enhances the story and helps readers visually adjust to the transition between timelines. The Old West pages have a faded, dusty look while the more current scenes are brighter and more colorful.
In his intro to sharing the preview with me, Zac Thompson revealed that “thematically the book is confronting our romanticization of violence in North America. And striving to show the stark difference between revenge in reality versus revenge in fiction.”
The first two issues give a good indication of where this is heading. It doesn’t take long to empathize with the main characters in both narratives and hope they find justice, revenge and/or redemption. This could turn out to be a story that deserves a place on the bookshelf next to your copies of Ed Brubakers excellent CRIMINAL series.
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