By Brandy Dykhuizen. Our Week In Review sums up our weekly comic book coverage while taking time for a new review or two before it’s all over. Did we miss your favorite books this week? Well. This is where you need to be.
Redneck #1
Image Comics/$3.99
Written by Donny Cates.
Art by Lisandro Estherren.
Colors by Dee Cunniffe.
Letters by Joe Sabino.
BD: The Bowmans are just your run-of-the-mill Southern family – they run a local BBQ joint, enjoy beers on the front porch, and occasionally blow off steam at the local titty bar – with the small exception that they’ve been shacked up on their property “since Texas was spelled with a J.”
See, The Bowmans? They’ve been laying low in Sulphur Springs for centuries, subsisting on cow’s blood and generally keeping the peace with the human population. They got a good thing going.
But as was chronicled in Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher, alcohol, egos, and immortality are rarely a good mix, and mouthing off during a misspent evening has disastrous consequences for the youngest Bowman.
Donny Cates constructs a world in which blood runs thick, but rotten branches can most certainly be chopped off the family tree to protect the clan’s greater good. Like a night out full of bad decisions, Cates creates a momentum of boredom and banter, which takes a sobering and severe plunge as the mistakes start piling up.
Interior page to ‘Redneck.’ Art by Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe/Image Comics
Lisandro Estherren uses the night to his advantage, smudging shadows across shady faces and letting the black ink creep around buildings and trees. The comfort of darkness cradles Redneck‘s vampire family, making the final scene in the searing daylight all the more jarring and terrible. Estherren’s imprecise lines and scratchy details establish a world just a little upside down and backwards from what most of us are used to dealing with, which constructs a clear boundary between the Bowman family and polite society, however obliging they try to be.
At times funny, a tad scary, and written in such a way that you instantly side with vampires of all things, Redneck #1 is an engrossing story with a captivating aesthetic.
8 out of 10
From earlier this week —
IDW is coming to C2E2 for the very first time, and that rules
AfterShock Comics returns to C2E2 with killer exclusives and awesome signings
Preview: The answer to that perplexing ‘Watchmen’ mystery begins in ‘Batman’ #21
Advance Review: Thrill to the über-violent return of ‘The Shaolin Cowboy’
Oni Press announces a literal boatload of C2E2 exclusives and appearances
Exclusive Preview: You take a shot at Diana, you get hurt in ‘Wonder Woman’ #21
We dive right into the secrets behind “The Button” (and boy, do our heads hurt)
What books did YOU read this week? We want to know! Tell us about those feelings of yours in the comments section below.
