Billy the Kit #1

Billy the Kit #1

JVGray 2021

Written by J.V. Gray

Illustrated by Barry McClain

Colours & Digital FX by Slamet Mujiono

Lettered by Benny Lava

A brave young hero who has been the victim of a gruesome crime. Witness the rise of a wild west gunslinger unlike any you've ever encountered in the history books or far reaches of your imagination! Magic and mayhem! Witches and devils! Outlaws and desperadoes! This one has it all, folks! A great and terrible evil has returned to the deserts and plains of the American Southwest as ancient tornado gods lay waste to entire towns.

Now if you haven’t seen J.V.’s kickstarters then you missed this it will be in stores in October. I got mine through the Kickstarter and I cannot tell you how good this book is, but I’m going to try. This is an anthropomorphic book so the animals are human like and its done in such a way that you’d never think of it as being anything but absolutely normal. You honestly forget that Billy is a kit, a young rabbit, and instead he is a young man whose determined. Determined is one word I am using to describe him and it’s this sheer will of determination that sets him apart right now and it’s impressive to see this in him.

I am loving the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exquisitely. The character development that we see is phenomenal thanks to the dialogue, the character interaction and the way they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story, introducing the characters and this world is done bloody brilliantly.

I really appreciate how we see this being structured and how the layers within begin to emerge and grow. It really is in these layers where we see a lot of the strongest characterisation and the bits and pieces that swirl around the main arc but bring this great depth and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved brilliantly.

The interiors are mindbogglingly brilliant. The linework is phenomenal and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level of quality detail work is absolutely stunning. The creativity and imagination that we see on the page is absolutely spectacular. I like how we see backgrounds and how they work within the composition of the panels bringing us the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a masterful eye for storytelling. The colour is bloody gorgeous! The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a brilliant eye for colour.

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I really love this book. How we are introduced to the story and the characters and this world is extraordinary thanks to how intelligently this is written and honestly with these brilliant mindbogglingly great interiors. We get caught up in this right from the get go as J.V. really is able to engage the reader and pull them in and get them invested in what we are seeing. Also it doesn’t take long before things for Billy go from bad to worse to determined and the one person whom he meets may have the answers he’s looking for. Billy’s new life and adventure is on the horizon and the question remains can he find what he’s looking for without losing who he is? Time will tell but for now I’m rooting for the kid.