Loose Ends #1 – Review

By: Jason LaTour (writer), Chris Brunner (artist) and Rico Renzi (colors)

The Story: The subtitle says it all: A “Southern Crime Romance”.

What’s Good: What a welcome surprise this was.  This is really the kind of comic that makes you want to scour the back of Previews to find hidden gems because, outside of Criminal, you simply won’t find outstanding crime comics at Marvel or DC.

The action all takes place in and around a roadside diner.  It really isn’t possible to spoil the plot because we really don’t know what is going on yet, but we spend this first issue just meeting the characters.  There’s the hot waitress that you see on the cover, some down on his luck criminal loitering in the parking lot, his ex-girlfriend and the typical drunk thugs hanging out at the bar.  Latour paces the storytelling very nicely and by the end of the issue, you feel like you have a pretty good handle on who these characters are even if you don’t really know what they’re up to.

Along the way, everything goes to hell in a hand-basket and we get a nasty, violent battle royale in the diner that doesn’t pull any punches.  Flipping back through those pages as I type this, that whole scene is just raw as hell.  There’s no stylized material arts or anyone being a badass, it’s just a nasty barroom brawl and the creators completely sell the realism of it all.