Comic Book Review: Dead Body Road #3

Dead Body Road #3

Written by: Justin Jordan

Art by: Matteo Scalera

Colors by: Moreno Dinisio

 

When a comic, any comic, no matter the number gets back to its roots — that’s when it works best. Welcome back to Dead Body Road.

I was none too happy with the second issue of Dead Body Road veering off into what felt like a one-shot that left so many great characters behind. I understand it was needed to get to this issue, but it felt like it only used minimal effort. Thankfully, Dead Body Road #3 gets back on track and dumps the crazy cast of despicables right in our laps.

Justin Jordan penned this bad boy with a vengeance. He knew exactly where he was going when he sat down and took the reigns of Orson and Rachel. And by doing so he presents a dialogue rich, plot heavy issue that fills in the gaps as well as raises new questions. Jordan provides some much needed background information for our main character which creates nice plot twists that work naturally within the story.

He’s got a great grasp of the voice of each character, which is impressive and appreciated when multiple characters are speaking to each other on a page. And that’s the beauty of this book — its characters. It’s loaded with bad guys who enjoy being bad and characters whose morality could go either way given the day. This is a revenge story where the revenge takes a back seat to the unique personalities taking charge.

Continuing his barrage of awesomeness is Matteo Scalera on art. Scalera’s slick, gritty line work provides the sullied aesthetic for the story being told. These are bad men doing bad things and Scalera’s sharp edges and grimy inks create a film of dirt on your eyes that won’t leave until you finish the issue. The panels are full and contain fully rendered backgrounds and all have the trademark “ink splash” dots all over them. The pacing and art direction are done well, however, a few action scenes left me a bit confused as to what was taking place but it was a minor infraction when looking at the whole.

While I’m here, I’ll let you guys in on a little secret — Moreno Dinisio has a trick to his beautiful coloring. What he does, see, is creates pages with the same color schemes. So while, individual items and elements might not  be anything special when you pull back and look at the group or scene together that’s when you notice the array of purples and blues, reds and yellows, blues and whites and yellows and greens. He’s coloring in total, not individual and it creates an amazing sense of tone throughout the book.

Dead Body Road #3 is back on track after a slower previous issue and it couldn’t be more welcome. The violence and intrigue is ramping up and can only get better from here.

Score: 6 (out of 7)

Thoughts? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Or find me on Twitter @theprophetlen

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