Hot Valley Days and Cocaine Nights #2

Hot Valley Days and Cocaine Nights #2

Antarctic Press 2020

Written by Matthew Spradlin

Illustrated by Farid Karami

Coloured by Andrew Crossley

MATURE READERS BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

Janie's decision to leave the business is causing rippling effects within her crew. The tension between her and her brother Jimmy is high. Zack is out of control. And after they both meet their cartel connection, Matias, in the early '80s, the whole wild ride starts to wind down along with the decade. Will Janie go out with a whimper... or a BANG?

Well as someone who lived through this decade along with the emerge of AIDS and the popularity of cocaine, which to this day is still so much better than anything else around, hitting it’s all time high and low in this made fro real life story adaptation I can tell you that if this were actually on ID or a network of that calibre we’d all want to be watching this non-stop, kind of like Tiger King took the world by storm. The opening here is fantastic and it’s kind of a shame too because the boys are clothed and the women with their plastic boobs are all hangin out, considering what we’re seeing I really wanna know why the guys aren’t all hangin out as well.

I am a huge fan of 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 exceptionally well. So the fact that we are seeing this effective use of then & now storytelling is so delightful to me because here it feels like it’s how it needs to be told and not this plot device because someone doesn’t know how to flesh things out. The character development that we see is amazing and I have to say that seeing how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter really does wonders in fleshing them out as people. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way we’re treated to a wild and crazy ride.

How we see the way that this is being structured and how the layers within the story are continuing to play their parts it is really something to see how this is being adapted from its source material. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow is beautifully done as well.

I am a huge fan of the interior artwork here. The linework is frakkin incredible and how we see the varying weights and at times techniques being utilised to create the quality and level of detail that we see is beyond stellar. How we see the composition within the panels and how backgrounds are utilised to enhance the moments, bring us some great depth perception, a 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 show a stupendous eye for storytelling. The colour work is gorgeously rendered as well. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a mastery of how colour could, should and does work. The choices made in the colour schemes are inspired by the era and I have to say this creativity and imagination is off the charts.

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Folks this is why I love Antarctic Press! You never know what you are going to get from them in terms of the genre, the depth of storytelling and just the amazing array of talent, creativity, verve and charisma that comes from these creators. You need this in your life and not just because I say so but because the storytelling is just that damn good.