Broke Down and 4 Dead Bodies

Story by Travis Gibb
Art by Felix Novara
Colors by James Sims, Alan Emmanuel
Letters by Jerome Gagnon
Edited by Heather Gibb

Buy it HERE.

Crime stuff.

A guy is leaving prison, having done his time. He's met by his former Boss Man, who is ready to give him another job. The job goes badly.

I think I've seen this motif a couple of times before. Not just in comics but in movies as well, particularly with Quentin Tarantino's output, of which Travis Gibb liberally borrows from. There's a lot of Pulp Fiction references here, and in case you missed them, the characters call out when they happen.

 

 

Rule number one...

The comic I have been working on for the last couple of years, in fact the ONLY comic Mayfield Eight also has a good deal of situations and crime/evil doings like Travis' book. The one thing that flashes through my brain again and again is this idea that I need to make my story clear, at least in the sense of who is doing what and to whom. What's the score so far, who's on top, who's in trouble. That sort of thing.

I wish Travis had this bug too. It may be that Pulp Fiction inspiration that's holding this comic back. BTAFDB's two main characters, Denver and Randy get introduced to us in a very sketchy cliche driven way that keeps us from understanding them as people. I could have forgiven the 'ex robber turned bad ass hit man' for Denver and the 'guy out of prison' for Randy schtick if there was a few pages whose sole purpose was to fill them out better as people, to give this story more nutritional value.

I think that Travis is aware of the thinness of his script. His method of adding density lies in throwing out flashback scenes with time stamps in the upper left corner. Flash backs and time stamps are tricky. I'm critical of them. Sure, they can be used at times to clarify a story better, to add a sense of logic and proportion. More often than not they are a gimmick used to avoid telling a story, yet appear to be giving the reader valuable information.

Does BDAFDB need to jump

I don't know.

After the fourth or so time stamp I felt like cutting the pages apart and assembling them in chronological order. At least that way I'd be more likely to piece together a story and start understanding it.

There's some meat on the bones here for sure: a love interest, Powerful crime-boss guys doing their powerful crime-boss stuff. The problem is there's not enough. I need to know more. Travis just simply didn't make Randy and Denver go through any transitions (in real time) that made me understand them better or want to care about them.

Next Tuesday:

The Fix

volumes 1 and 2 by Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber!

 

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