Guest Review - Deadhorse #1

   Back one more time in the Guest Review spot is Lyle Tucker, who's part of the team filling in while Chuck takes a short break.

   Deadhorse #1, Deadhorse Press, 2012. Written by Eric Grissom, drawn by Phil Sloan.

   The prologue takes us to snow-covered Denali, Alaska in 1877. After three months of searching, a small group of men come upon an encampment of The Gadsworth Company, littered with corpses. In one of the tents a dead man is found clutching a locked box in his hands. It is the original Gadsworth, the father of the leader of this search party. Ripping the box from the clutches of his father's corpse, the younger Gadsworth sets the tent afire and gives orders to burn the encampment to the ground.

   We jump forward to present day Anchorage, Alaska, with the arc of the story being called "Dead Birds" and with chapter one entitled “The Sandwich Eaters.” The adult son of a member of the search party, William Pike, receives a letter from his father, containing a key to a locked box. “A box hidden in an abandoned city at the edge of the world.” However, William is stymied by the letter's arrival, as his father has been dead for close to 40 years. (It took me a while to figure out that the original date of 1877 in the prologue had to be a typo, and the year was meant to be 1977 - * sigh *).

   Nonetheless, William, whom it has been made clear is something of a sheltered recluse, resolves to solve the mystery being presented to him, and begins on a journey to Dead Horse, Alaska, only to be momentarily waylaid by some neighbors of his with possible murderous motives. The story takes something of an absurd turn here, signaling to the reader that the tone of this story will shift on a dime into the surreal.

   The art by Phil Sloan is much more cartoony than I usually go for, but he has a dramatic style that I like, which provides the story's action with strong visuals. The story is intriguing enough to make me want to read the next issue.

Grade: B

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