Dark Ride #7 // Review
They’re going to the most exclusive club in the world. One of them owns the place. The rest of them have a bone to pick with him. He’s a father. Not a particularly good one by any measure, but he’s got a few things to say to them as well in Dark Ride #7. Writer Joshua Williamson continues an interesting journey with artist Andrei Bressan. Color inhabits the page under the auspices of Adriano Lucas. The series takes a move to the more dramatic end of things in an issue that is more or less completely focused on a single conversation.
The club looks like it’s set-up backstage in a huge disused theater space. So, it’s not like there’s any pressure to develop any kind of drama, right? It’s entirely possible that Mr. Dante was intending for the conversation to turn dramatic. (The guy DID open a popular horror theme park, after all.) It’s also possible that he knew that the drama couldn’t help but come and wanted an appropriate space for it. It’s also possible that he knew that someone was going to try to take his life, and he wanted to have bodyguards close by in case things got ugly.
It’s really just one conversation. That’s it. That’s the whole issue. There’s an introductory flashback and a closing cliffhanger, but other than that, it’s all one big conversation. There aren’t many writers who can slide something like that between two covers and call it an issue. And while Dark Ride #7 isn’t exactly a comic book adaptation of My Dinner With Andre, it’s quite an accomplishment to hold a reader’s attention with a dark family conversation punctuated by physical assault. It’s not all abstract conversation, but there is a HELL of a lot of that in the issue. Williamson does a very sharp job of holding the drama together with very tight dialogue.
The writing can be amazingly crisp, but if a dialogue-driven comic book doesn’t have something visual to hold it together, it’s not really embracing the medium all that well. Bressan cleverly launches the drama across the page. There are a couple of powerful establishing shots which firmly place the conversation. Lucas adds considerable depth to the mood with the color in those establishing shots. There might have been colorists who would have been tempted to add a bit of atmospheric background to the drama once the dialogue really gets going. Lucas is wise to keep the background vague and indistinct while rending subtle depth to the faces of everyone as they go at each other with words.
Williamson has an excellent rhythm for the series. The seventh issue brings the ensemble to a very crucial moment. It’s a conflict that has been brewing for quite some time. It’s a bit strange to see it flow out the way that it does in the seventh issue. One might have expected something more dynamic in the showdown. It’s just a conversation before the food arrives at a restaurant. Williamson, Bressan, and Lucas make the pre-dinner conversation quite engrossing.
