Share this
Creative Team: Keanu Reeves (Creator), Jason Aaron (Writer), Salvador Larroca (Illustrator), Lee Loughridge (Colorist), Ed Dukeshire (Letterer), Michelle Ankley (Logo Designer), Grace Park (Designer), Ramiro Portnoy (Editor)
BRZRKR: A FACEFUL OF BULLETS Published by BOOM! Studios
FIRST THOUGHTS
The concept behind BRZRKR lends itself to an unquenchable thirst for stories about an immortal man that doesn’t want to fight the world, but a world that wants nothing more than to fight him. Give me a writer and artistic team that wants to dive into the heart of this man at any time in his existence and I will pull up a stool to the bar and read it.
THE STORY
This story takes place in 1856 in Missouri and follows B as he comes across a wedding massacre where only the bride lives because it was her father that had sent the men to kill everyone but her.
B takes out all but one of the hired killers and ensures the bride that he will help her safely travel Kansas. Her need for vengeance gets in their way along their journey, and that’s where you’ll have to read this issue to find out what happens.
Jason Aaron crafts a character driven story that just happens to have a lot of violence on the page. The wild card throughout this story is Maybell, the bride, as she is set that the only way she can be free of her father’s torment is if B kills him.
MORE FROM BOOM! STUDIOS
B is a stoic figure who doesn’t kill simply to kill, even if that death may protect someone. Maybell refers to it as “principles no mortal could rightly comprehend”. Having read all of the BRZRKR stories in print, this is probably one of the more understandable reasons behind B’s violence.
The interesting part of Aaron’s story is that B isn’t the main character, it’s Maybell. This issue is about her struggle and her need for vengeance as well as her need to escape from the life she has lived under her father’s iron grip. B is a co-lead at best, and that’s a very interesting take on a story in his life. There are millions of people’s lives he just walks through without any kind of interaction, and then there are some that he’s the catalyst for change once he walks out of their lives. That kind of storytelling opens up to so many more adventures, and makes this issue itself amazing.
THE ART
Salvador Larroca and Lee Loughridge’s art throughout this issue is incredible. There’s always so little you can say when you talk about veteran artists working at the top of their craft in a comic. This is one of those comics that they both came into and said “hold my beer” and put on a clinic. This issue does offer up a lot of opportunities for them to stretch their skills.
The opening sequence with the young boy who is trying to help B out of a predicament, has Larroca showing genuine concentration on the boy’s face as he focuses his gun. This scene always allows Loughridge to provide a bright and sunny color palette that is nowhere to be seen throughout the rest of this issue. And then you get a number of full pages where the two provide an amazing amount of detail without overwhelming the page.
And we can’t round out talking about the art without talking about another veteran to the industry – Ed Dukeshire, the letterer of this issue. The writing and the art give Dukeshire a lot to work with and provide his own artistic touch to the book from the dialogue and narration to the sound effects, Dukeshire weaves in and out of the page with ease.
FINAL THOUGHTS
BRZRKR: A FACEFUL OF BULLETS #1 is a strong and entertaining story from Jason Aaron, Salvador Larroca, Lee Loughridge, and Ed Dukeshire that tells a desperate story of Maybell’s need to escape and her revenge that could be her downfall and how B fits into helping her make that decision. This issue provides just the right amount of story that can be told in one issue. There’s more that can be told with the characters that B deals with outside of Maybell, and maybe those stories can be told another time.
