(sorry for sending this twice, it's the anal side of me. See, I forgot to write the title correctly as 'two of two' the last time. Thanks ahead of time! -Tim.)

SINK review part Two of Two

SINK: Blood & Rain

By
John Lees writer.
Alex Cormack artist, colors.
Ashlee Cormack colors.
and Shawn Lee letters.
Published by Comixtribe

Buy it HERE.

No more waiting, time to SINK into Sink!

It's made up of five parts, starting with Chapter 6. There's a level of professionalism and seriousness spent in staying 'on topic', of giving the reader a satisfying time following each story's thread. Chapters 8 and 9 has their main character Mr. Dig, the fox-headed shovel wielding bad ass. This part feels meaty and substantial, with the action flowing along at a frantic clip. Here's a rundown of the chapters:

Chapter Six: Death and the Midden

A 'midden' is a junk heap, where the action takes place on a rainy night. A woman gets captured by evil clowns with slashed faces in a blue van. She is mutilated and is thrown out. There's a lot of thin white line sloshy-ness and rainy atmosphere as we see her gradually get back at her foes, using unusual cunning.

Chapter Seven: Lead Balloon

Jordan wants to join a gang in Glasgow and be a big shot. To do that he has to endure life as their underling along with several other young guys who all run around with condoms on their heads. They're called 'dickheads'. To move up in the gang they have to come up with some nasty bit of endangerment/mayhem/torture, or even murder. You have to complete this by your 30th birthday or face the 'lead balloon'. Jordan (who has 5 days to go) is a sort of ordinary 'nice' type of guy who we quickly relate to. He's unsure if he wants to go ahead with this, and after some self-discovery backs out of joining the gang and face the 'lead balloon' ritual. He has no idea what it is, and neither do we. This chapter had a lot of wintery, open air dull day feeling to it, a certain amount of ennui which worked as a strong counterpart to the previous chapter.

Chapters Eight and Nine: Graphite Green

Graphite Green is an 'ideal' high rise intended to get wayward and troubled families back on their feet and have a clean safe haven to come home to. Our protagonist/family is a husband, wife, son and daughter from a war-torn part of the world. They're immigrants, not Scottish, probably Islamic (as the mother keeps her head covered). The high rise appears all too ideal and a bit too good to be true. There's a lot of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining operating here as Graphite Green's proprietor Mr. Mundell shows the family its slick clean and polished open spaces, the luxurious common room and such.

I love the weird gargoyle statues out on the front entrance which lends a macabre sense to what would've been an otherwise boring establishment shot.

Once we're out of Graphite Green we get a kind of comedic after-story:

Chapter Ten: Bed Bug

It opens with an awkward 'blind date' style dinner between a divorced man and a woman who want to start over again. There's an extreme close-up of some rare steak getting sliced (but of course), leading up to some unexpected weird bondage scenes:

It doesn't stay a comedy for long, as soon our man and woman become trapped in a dangerous (and awkward) situation. John Lees ends this tale the way he began the whole series, with the 'clowns in the van' motif, which was a great way to 'tie' things up.

... and there's a chock-full of extra material in the back of shorts and pin-ups related to the world of 'Sink'.

John Lees' horror delves into moral questions that go beyond the story itself, such as what it means to be a father, a protector and provider of your family. Good horror -or any genre for that matter- puts you the reader on the spot for a few moments asking yourself 'what would you do?' in this or that particular situation. As far as horror itself goes, it works best (and Graphite Green illustrates my point) when ordinary people winding up doing extraordinary things...

... sure, the Alien was cool in the original Alien, but seeing (for 1979) an unknown actress portraying a minor employee of Weyland Utani on her last chance of survival slipping into that spacesuit and hitting the open-door button in the space pod was what really sold us on the story.

With upcoming projects like Mountainhead and Motell (email OK Comics in Leeds UK HERE to order a copy) Mr. Lees will be supplying us with more and more extreme tales of macabre situations involving people like you and I trying to survive (which give us all a break from the Covid-19 disruptions going on).

SINK: Blood & Rain

Published by Comixtribe

Buy it HERE.

Read 'The Rat Hole Bastards'

The Rat Hole Bastards is a 4-panel weekly comic strip set in a few years before Mayfield Eight. See the origins of Slade and his notorious Banshees biker gang! NOW LIVE on Patreon!:

Buy Mayfield Eight

Mayfield Eight is a 28-page comic book set in 1974 New Mexico where a 17-year-old fry cook gets in deep trouble with a local biker gang as he helps a sleazy friend conduct a back-room drug deal.

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