215 Ink 2018
Created, Written, Inked & Coloured by Chris Dreier
Pencilled by Giuseppe D'Elia
Tales of the Dark Tunnel #1
In this debut issue the Dark Tunnel drops our trio in the middle of an evil plot to transform the world's population into mindless zombies under the control of the King of the Living Dead. Also, there may be a connection to the trio's circumstances and what lies in the cavern of death.
I want to thank Chris for contacting me and asking me to review this book. I have a great respect for 215 Ink and the books they put out and as far as I can tell they have a nice eye for finding interesting projects to get behind. This one is out of the box for sure and I like that this trio, or quartet depending on your point of view, know each other and have had many adventures together before we encounter them. It's a great idea to start this already in progress as that allows for the new adventures to have those flashbacks to an earlier time to continue fleshing out the characters in new and interesting ways.
For me personally it has this kind of Challengers of the Unknown vibe mixed with Doom Patrol as these self-proclaimed freaks work together to fight evil. I like the way that this is being told and while this is our introduction to the series and these characters I applaud how Chris manages to make this new reader friendly as well as an exciting look at their power sets and what they bring to the table. This really has a wonderful structure to the way it's being told as the pacing takes us through the book while it also serves to mix the story & plot development and the character development together so intrinsically while keeping things moving forward.
The characterisation that we see here is extremely well done. While most of it comes from the dialogue that the characters have with one another we do also see them in action to further see how they react to the situations. I am just impressed with the entire setup of the book and how Chris manages to take us through the book. It very much has a traditional almost throwback kind of feel to the storytelling and proving that this kind of storytelling fits into today's world better than that dark angst ridden stuff the proliferates some companies today.
The interiors are pretty solid as well. I don't know what I was expecting but it seemed almost amateur hour at first glance but Giuseppe really has some wonderful control over the linework by utilising their varying weights which beautifully bring out this attention to detail that makes a world of difference in how we see things. There is an extremely nice eye for storytelling that we see as the composition inside the panels show how he understands depth perception with the utilisation of foregrounds and backgrounds. The colour work is nicely done as well. The way we see light sources utilised to create shading and shadows is very well done. The way we see colour blocking utilised to create those highlights and deeper shades and hues is impressive.
Don't judge a book by it's cover lol because once again 215 Ink has an extremely strong well thought out and executed book here. The writing is strong and the way we see everything working together to create such a great mood, tone and feel in this book impresses me a lot more than I thought it would. It does have that old school feel but that's a huge draw for me because this is how comics used to be and it brings me back to my childhood days that got me reading them in the first place. Take a chance on this you won't be disappointed.