Image Comics 2019
Written by Rodney Barnes
Illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander
Coloured by Luis NCT
Lettered by Marshall Dillon
“SINS OF THE FATHER,” Part One
When a small-town beat cop comes home to bury his murdered father—the revered Philadelphia detective James Sangster Sr.—he begins to unravel a mystery that leads him down a path of horrors that will shake his beliefs to their core. The city that was once the symbol of liberty and freedom has fallen prey to corruption, poverty, unemployment, brutality… and vampires. Welcome to KILLADELPHIA.
Okay my first instinct was ooh okay this'll be good, in my mind I was thinking Philadelphia with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington and yes this is a glimpse into the workings of my mind. So suitably intrigued by the title when I picked it up at the story and saw Jason's interiors I got even more excited, being a fanboy sometimes is fun. I had to read this three times before sitting down to this review. Because I had to everything I saw into my mind and process it so that I could adequately convey my feelings about this. So run, don't walk, corre, no camines, to your store and grab a copy before they are all gone because this is a sleeper hit, it'll blow up now that it's out and folks start talking about it, like I am here.
So the way this is being told really is utterly sensational. The story & plot development and how we see the sequence of events unfolding, how the reader is given information and the overall way the book is structured is genius. The character development is amazing in how strong and steady it builds the characters. Seeing the son and what he thinks about his father and still the actions he takes it's such a great contradiction and it instils this need to know more. The pacing is so above par and how the twists and turns lead us into this cliffhanger ending leaves as exhausted like you ran a 10k marathon. The ebb & flow that we see is just mindbogglingly good.
I mean ooh child what on earth possessed you to come up with this concept? Just the way that this is executed and how it makes the reader feel reading it, is such a powerful thing to have happen. The blending of this book with a cops working mind, a son who hates his old man and then the horror element that ties them all together this is madness, the kind that would gladly sit and have tea at the Hatter's table kind of madness.
I am a fan of Jason's work and this is pretty much shows you why. The linework we see here and the way he utilises the varying weights to bring this level of detail to life is just stupefying and sensational. The way we see the faces, facial expressions and body language here helps to further the characterisation, while at the same time brings so much emotion and feeling to life. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show this superb eye for storytelling. When we see the backgrounds they have this mystifying effect on the reader and the first time you really go wow is when we see Harvest Green Homes for the first time. That view is scary good in how it's brought to life I mean dayum.
The colour work is exquisitely gorgeous. I mean there are so many instances of shading or bleeding into white or even just seeing the cordon tape the moments pop like fireworks. Then there is how we see a main colour and it's various hues and tones within it to create this shading, highlights and shadow work that takes the breath away. The lettering here is absolutely phenomenal, from the cursive writing in the journal to the dialogue and narration boxes plus then there's the graffiti and such there are so many different examples of writing here and it leaves me extremely impressed.
This book has so many different twists and turns to the story and how they are implemented and executed are so flawlessly done. I came into this not exactly sure what this was going to be about and came out of it with my jaw on the floor.