The darkness grows as teases of the reality of this world surface more.
Creative Staff:
Story: Evan Dorkin
Art: Benjamin Dewey
Letterer: Nate Piekos of Blambot
What They Say:
The dogs have started to solve the occult activity happening around them but one of their own is struck down and puts the mission in jeopardy.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I really liked the first issue of Beasts of Burden even if doesn’t gel with me in terms of the pacing. There’s just something about it that leaves me feeling off as it comes across more as novel storytelling pacing than comic book. Evan Dorkin is giving us some good and distinctive characters and a story that I’m intrigued by but that I’m still feeling very off about as I don’t have the foundations for understanding how this world works. The teases for it are here and that definitely helps some. But even with this minor issues I’m really enjoying the artwork as Benjamin Dewey is giving us something really rich and detailed in a painted kind of way that makes each panel stand out beautifully.
Dealing with the mutant lurkers previously, the initial aspects of this issue focuses on Lundy and the rest finishing off the disposal and figuring out their next plan of action. The problem comes with one of the others getting all in Lundy’s face over things only to suddenly fall over from illness related to the attack. This is where we get a good expansion on the world as Lundy and a few others work to bring him to Arthur, a retired human who helps out the animals in their fight. He and his dog, Huxley, aged out of the fight itself but help in this way. At his residence in the countryside, we get to see through the younger members such as Miranda of the past and discover that some of them have spent decades fighting with their human companions in this war and it does a lot to showcase the scale of events that wasn’t clear before if you’ve only read this series, like me.
While the healing goes on the group sets off to check out the town of Derrington and the Carver Fields farm in particular based on the intel they have. It’s something that has them dealing with a group of raccoons first that have been twisted into something else, branded and marked and all, and then seeing the carnage at the farm where something has gone horribly wrong. With this being the halfway mark of the four-issue series, it’s working a lot of material so far and feels pretty dense with what it does and its covered a lot of story points so far. Admittedly, I’m not connecting with the characters too much outside of Lundy and a lot of my problem is that I feel like I don’t know the way this world operates/exists enough just yet.
In Summary:
Beasts of Burden moves along well here as it deals with the fallout from the previous fight and an injured comrade. The push into the next round of the story is well-handled and I like the scale of events that are picking up well here. I really enjoyed all the material involving Arthur and Huxley as it expanded my understanding of the world but I feel like I’m still missing way too much of it and how it operates. But even with that, it’s a very interesting read and it looks great throughout, making for a really good experience.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 26th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
