Kevin Eastman Studios 2019
Created & Story by Kevin Eastman & David Avallone
Written by David Avallone
Illustrated by Ben Bishop
Coloured by Brittany Peer
Lettered by Taylor Esposito
Flashbacks by Ben Bishop & Kevin Eastman
Hallucinations by Ben Bishop & Troy Little
Kevin Eastman (TMNT) returns to independent comics with a new creation: an inside look at the turbulent life and times of a once-successful cartoonist on the skids, Shane "Books" Bookman. Once upon a time, Books co-created The Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls: a gritty, funny indie comic that became a billion dollar global franchise. Now, years later, the partnership dissolved, the corporate buy-out all spent, Books is struggling to recover from the hit-and-run driver called early success... and looking for the will and the joy to create something new again.
When I was making my list of books I was interested in reviewing this week I saw this being offered. As I was unfamiliar with it I check out the details and when I saw David’s name attached I knew I wanted to read this at the very least. I have been extremely impressed with his writing ability and I was right one the money thinking this one would be no different. To say I was prepared for this would be an understatement because well I wasn’t and I couldn’t be any more thrilled by that. There is a story here that I have not seen before and that alone would be worth the price of admission but the overall level and quality of the work I am seeing here has made me excited to see where this is going.
I like the way that this is structured. The opening is certainly something that grabs your attention straight away. The fact that the narration boxes look like yellow legal pad paper is fantastic. That there’s cocaine being snorted makes me wish I were in that car. All I know is that the way we are taken through the opening is done in a way that all screams for more. We want to know more, we want to know how this got to be this way and who all these people are. In essence it does everything that we want an opening to do and it does it extremely well.
This is my introduction, I believe, to Ben’s work. I had to look him up to be sure, heh. I’ll say this much he just impressed me greatly with this issue. I like seeing his linework and how the varying weights are utilised and manipulated to create some very nice attention to detail. I do like the strength of the lines we see and it shows me a confident hand that is comfortable, or just a natural, at doing this. When we see the backgrounds utilised they do wonders in expand the moments so I would like to see them put in more often, I just don’t see the point of these blah backgrounds, and it’s really the grey that makes me feel this way and by contrast when we see him on the street it’s a complete wow moment. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a very nice solid eye for storytelling. The colour work is really nice as well, Brittany does a really nice job. The way that light sources are utilised in providing shading, colour gradation and shadows is super to see.
The characterisation here is phenomenal and each person that we are introduced to here have these interesting and unique qualities about them that even if they are not the nicest of people they still have a way of making you interested in them. The pacing is strong and things seem to move at just the right pace so that we feel like we’re a part of things and seeing them move from scene to scene in a more cinematic way. I love smaller/indie press books it’s where I seem to find the talent that is able to fully unleash and create in ways that leave us panting in anticipation for what’s next and I am certainly doing that now.