Savage Circus #2

Savage Circus #2

Heavy Metal Comics 2020

Written by Brendan Columbus

Illustrated by Al Barrionuevo

Coloured by Candace Han

Lettered by Dave Sharpe

As Deputy Brady Harrison chases down the armored truck filled with Basin Bay’s fortune, it’s T-Boned by the Savage Circus train car. The crash unleashes hordes of deadly animals that swarm the town putting every last soul in mortal danger!

The moment I saw the cover to this book I got incredibly excited. It is without a doubt one of those books that once you see it the entirety of the last issue comes rushing back like lost memory that’s suddenly found. It brings a smile to the face and you know that what we are going to see is going to be extremely fun and unpredictable. Unpredictable because we have no idea when the all the pieces of the puzzle are going to line up and collide, like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, creating that massive spark igniting the readers’ mind, imagination and wrecking all kinds of havoc on this little town. The excitement here is palpable and that this is a maxi-series is a kind of dream come true.

I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented extremely well. I think that there is tenderness, romance and humour mixed in with all the potential horror and bloodshed on the horizon that fills the reader with this amazing sense of tension. The character development that we see is really quite good. I like seeing how the characters interact with one another and how they react to the situations and circumstances they find themselves in. The dialogue is good, cheeky at times and has that right feel of someone writing parts for film. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way we are given a great look at what’s in store.

The way that we see this being structured and with how the layers within the story continue to gain momentum or are created anew they continue to add the complexity of the story. How we see everything working together to create the the story’s ebb & flow is beautifully done. There is something about this that while we know what’s supposed to be coming it really isn’t the destination but the journey towards it that makes it all worthwhile.

I do very much like the interior artwork here. It has a strong classic comic book style to what we see and that lends itself to the story at hand very nicely. How we see the linework and it’s varying weights and techniques being utilised to bring out the detail work that we see is extremely well rendered. The shattered window to the train to the circus animals what we see throughout has the kind of attention paid to it that helps make a book more successful than you might imagine. The way that backgrounds are incorporated into the composition of the panels enhances the moments as it brings us this depth perception, sense of scale and that 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. Oh I love seeing how the colour work is laid down here. The various techniques being utilised to lay the colour down is beautifully demonstrated. The myriad of hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show such an understanding and knowledge of how colour works.

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All around this is a beautifully done book and just demonstrates that in today’s world and in today’s market you have to open your mind to what else is out there aside from what you are typically used to reading. Heavy Metal is making a major push into mainstream comics with a wide variety of titles and genres and there is absolutely no reason to miss this level and quality of storytelling.