Django Unchained #2 – Review

By: Quentin Tarantino & Reginald Hudlin (story), R.M. Guéra & Jason Latour (art), Giulia Brusco (colors)

The Story: It only takes one phony tooth to take out a crowd of surly men.

The Review: It’s something of a luxury to review an adaptation when you’ve never seen the original.  Despite our best open-minded intentions, we tend to get pretty attached to the first version of any story, and anything that comes after seems pale or too different by comparison.  Maybe if I had already seen the movie version of Django Unchained, I might be a little more cautious about the comic, as I might with the cheapie “novel” adaptation of Avatar.

As it stands alone, though, Django Unchained the comic works very well.  The last issue established the premise and introduced the characters with surprising efficiency, and this issue rolls along at nearly the perfect pace, fleshing out the general direction of the story while giving us an outline of what’s to come.  I don’t know Hudlin at all, having never read his run on Black Panther, but he melds his familiarity with the original Django with his comic book writing skills very well to deliver the ideal adaptation.