Comic book review: By the Time I Get to Dallas Book 2

By the Time I Get to Dallas Book 2

Story: Colin Devonshire
Inks: Dario Fas Marin
Pencils: Juanfrancisco Moyano
Colors: Jacinto Moyano
Letters: Jaymes Reed
Contributing Editor: Matthew Idelson

Book 2
Comic book, 29 pages.
Published by Pitdoc Press

(Buy it HERE)

The story of Rudy Deckart continues.

Last when I was reading about his problems I got caught up in his staff-intern medical student/practitioner hijinks. He was a bit of an ass, too smart for his own good. I also forgot how good that story was upon re-reading it in preparation for Book 2. By the Time I Get to Dallas is a solid read, that's for sure.

(read the first review HERE.)

To get you up to speed: In a short space of time a young medical intern, Rudy, gets caught up in a world-wide abnormal pattern of behavior in which almost every living soul (I think Colin Devonshire puts it at 80% in the synopsis) wants to migrate to an area near Dallas Texas. Rudy's girlfriend has a fight with him and without explaining why she too needs to get away... to Dallas.

It isn't clear if she's got the 'thing' or not. Rudy's on a quest to save her. But following this unstoppable throng to find her will prove to be dangerous.

In Issue Two Colin goes a little deeper in explaining the pathology/behavior of this 'migration obsession' illness: People are somewhat glassy-eyed, slightly unresponsive, yet they can drive, pilot a boat, or fly a plane. For a while. Then those people stop caring, talking, eating, sleeping, they become impervious to pain or injury. And they get violent if you try to stop them. There's a sizable outburst from a penned-in area in Boston to give you a sense that this could escalate.

I've watched The Walking Dead up to season 9, skimmed some of the comic book. I've heard of 'Crossed' and skimmed some free online pages. TWD -of course, is the George Romero style Zombies (slow stupid can't use tools), only they want to eat everything -not brains, and everyone in the world has the bug; they'll turn into one of the undead when they die, period. Crossed is a bit sick with bad-taste intentions where people develop a straight-line rash cross across and up and down their faces, then perform heinous acts of violence, both corporal and sexual, on their victims. One cover had a nice scene with little kids playing at a day-care outside, on the slide and so on. Open the cover, and the back side has them sliding into an abattoir, getting ground up into hamburger by the 'crossed' caretakers -yeech!-

So, BTTIGTD is somewhere on the gentler slower side of the apocalypse, the violence is toned down. But that doesn't prevent Colin from putting together a very sad and dim outlook for the world. He's being careful not to make this so overly violent or a caricature of yet another 'end of the world' story so that we can have time to relate to and follow Rudy into his adventure.

The artwork, once again, is stellar. The writing is well-honed. You can tell this team is really on point as far as getting their story down. There was also a cool back story comic The Trinity Project.

Ironic it is that we're in the high-peak of the Covid-19 pandemic that has the authorities stressing 'staying apart' from each other when we have this story all about almost everyone on planet earth trying to do just the opposite.

Next Tuesday: not a review BUT-

Comic book reviews will come back on March 9th. In its stead for the next few weeks will be Kickstarter related news all about Mayfield Eight: my 1970s Grind-House Biker action tale!

This Tuesday: Variant Covers!!

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