Dead Eyes: The Empty Frames #3 // Review
He’s having a bad day. He accidentally killed that mob torpedo.He’s got a hell of a lot of things to do to get ready to get the paintings out of the house during the funeral (which is going to be a kind of a complicated thing. On top of it all he’s got a message to dead drop. He’s got to get to the worst topless bar in Boston. Just another night in Dead Eyes: The Empty Frames #3. Writer Gerry Duggan continues his somewhat surreal and gritty crime drama with artist John McCrea and colorist Mike Spicer.
The establishment in question is a place called “Thin Bar.” It’s on the corner of Jack Avenue and Knife Street. Dead Eyes refers to it as “the razor burn cabaret.” He’s there to meet Wheels. There’s a device on the table playing an angry message. Wheels is holding up a card telling Dead Eyes that he’s wearing a wire. So...it’s going to be a kind of a complicated exchange between the two of them. The angry message on the device tells Dead Eyes that he owes him money. So it’s a little strange, but clearly Wheels has some idea what he’s doing. With any luck, Dead Eyes does as well.
“Thanks to a putrid slick of vomit across polished mahogany floors, I have a new lease on life.” That’s remarkably sharp prose. Wow. Duggan’s writing sparkles with dark filth that crawls across the page without ever being anything other than reasonably classy. The humor is almost obscene. Dead Eyes continues to impress with one of the most disgusting and disgustingly believable fight scenes to make it to the comics page in recent memory. It’s a very sharp and memorable trip from the front cover to the back cover on this one. Brutally clever.
McCrea and Spicer Bring the disgusting action to the page quite a while. It's been kind of a rough and sketchy darkness that makes it around the edges of the ink of the shadows. It's some very garish color as well. There's a strong and deep kinetic feel about the action that also manages to be remarkably immersive without throwing-in a whole lot of lines or details around the edges of everything. There is remarkably heavy and percussive action that hits towards the end of the issue which serves as a very sharp contrast from some of the more intricate subtlety being attempted at the opening of the issue. It’s a nice balance.
The filth and brutality of the issue marks a pronounced moment at the end of the issue that feels like a nice moment of accent. It really hits the page and just the right way. And it's going to be interesting to see where it goes from here. Because there's a quite a lot that could happen in that fourth issue. Things could take a pretty turn. But overall, the events of the third issue quite an impact it remarkably vivid straight through.
Grade: A
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