SUCKER review part One of Two

By
Tony Talbert, plot, pencils
Jason McNamara, plot, script
John Heebink, ink, editor
Paul Little, color

Buy Issue One from Jason's website HERE.

Buy Issues One or Two from SUCKER'S Indiegogo campaign HERE.

First off, this has a very enthralling cover that appealed to me on many levels. The imagery is both sexy and gross, and simple which gets the message across. Most importantly the degree of confidence and slickness shows in its execution to make me want to see what's inside, which is what a good cover is all about.

Important to note is that I'm not necessarily and automatic fan of Horror, but I wanted to read this comic anyway.

The slickness holds up in the first few pages, with the penciling of Talbert and inking of Heebink and colors of Little displaying a kind of tight, clean, almost board-game quality. No matter what happens in this comic, you can rest assured the depictions will be clear and to the point.

The story starts straight-forward but gets pretty Byzantine soon after.

• We start off with a high rise luxury penthouse apartment heist gone bad, two early victims (the robbers) get attacked by an ancient vampire.
• Then we jump to another apartment of a rich playboy doing coke and getting a hooker up to his place... with the vampire in the background.
• Then we go to Philadelphia for an opening of a new cancer research center overseen by an older lady Senator Sullivan.
• Then we go to Newark to see a grizzled vampire bounty hunter out of work in a bar with his estranged son, bitching about his ex-wife.
• THEN... (we are only 10 pages in folks) there's a one-pager of a priest in Boston getting the call to hunt vampires
• followed by a scene in Long Island City of scientists researching vampires.
• Oh yes, there's a 10 years ago flashback, which establishes how the vampire in the high rise made it back from being slaughtered for science by the divorced bounty hunter

-whew- That's 7 different places or times.

Allow me to quibble for a moment: Lots and lots of scene changes and flashbacks (mercifully only one here) are like going to a restaurant and being seated at the bar, at your table, at another table because they need to use yours to group a big banquette and then what you ordered arrived with the dessert first. You'll get through the meal all right and you'll get fed but you wish it could've been a simpler ordeal.

Yet going through all that wasn't too bad given the slick board-game look of the comic. I knew the story would right itself fairly quickly. It didn't seem there would be stuff that I'd have to remember to understand the story. A big thing that keeps Sucker an enjoyable read is the dialogue. It's really good.

SUCKER: BOOK ONE, BOOK TWO

Buy Issue One from Jason's website HERE.

Buy Issues One or Two from SUCKER'S Indiegogo campaign HERE.

Part Two of this review will be coming next week, stay tuned!