Things look different when you hit rock bottom.
Creative Staff:
Story: Duane Swierczynski
Art: Michael Gaydos
What They Say:
“The Bullet’s Kiss, Part 1 of 5” When Philadelphia police officer Greg Hettinger stepped into the middle of a gunfight, hot lead shredded his face — and he pulled the trigger, blind. Now Greg is waking up in a world where he’s a killer, hopelessly scarred and hooked on painkillers. What does a man do when he can no longer face the world, yet still wants to do good? He puts on a hood…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
It’s not easy to start something new. It’s even harder when there’s a lot of history behind it. The Black Hood is the first release from the Dark Circle Imprint from Archie Comics that’s looking to try and bring back some of its characters that it’s owned over the decades but haven’t always connected well. There’ve been a few attempts back in the 90’s, which I really enjoyed a lot with some of these characters, so seeing them being brought around again has me excited. There’s so many ways you can rework and re invent characters that it can simply be fascinating to see what new people bring to a project, especially if you’re untethered from so many other things. This series is starting off in very good hands with Duane Swierczynski on the writing chores and with Michael Gaydos to bring the story to life in a rich and detailed way.
With a real world application here, we’re largely getting a vigilante story at the start, though with a slow build design to it over the double sized issue that we get here with lots of bonus material. The series sets us in Philadelphia, which our officer Greg Hettinger tells us is known more as Killadelphia because of just how dangerous it is. Greg’s shown to us over the course of the book as a decent cop, not a bad guy but maybe not the best cop in the world, but more the down in the trenches type that does his thing. He’s had a good life overall, getting by at times on his looks to the point where he’s even had a few instances of his charm winning over a criminal to ease a situation down. While there’s been a lot of white flight from the city where he is in the Frankfort section, he’s still there as it’s full of memories and it’s what partially defines him. He’s a man of his place and sees the good amid all the bad that’s going on.
Unfortunately for Greg, he had one of those right time/wrong time situations at the start here where he attempted to stop some criminal activity going on outside of a school only to get half his face shot off. But he somehow powered through it and took out the main criminal there, which turned out to be a shady character known as The Black Hood. Not much is revealed about him, but there’s the nod that he was viewed in different ways by people; some as a criminal, some as a force for justice. So while Greg killed him and there’s a lot of acclaim for it even if he doesn’t remember doing it, it doesn’t sit well with everyone. And, importantly, it doesn’t sit well with Greg as the taking of a life really makes an impact on him during his recovery phase.
And this is what really dominates the book here and makes it so engaging, between the narration from Greg and the rough, grimy and run down oppressive feeling of the artwork. We see the way Greg struggles with his speech therapy as he learns how to try and talk again. We see how he becomes more and more cut off from people with the way he knows how they look at him. We see the loss of identity that he has because of this since he’s not the handsome young cop on the block that nobody will cause trouble for. And we see how he struggles so very hard with the pain medication addiction that gets into him since as time goes on, nothing seems to work anymore. When he gets his hands on stuff he shouldn’t, we see how it sends him into an almost oblivion of sorts. And those are the final moments, the ones that moves him into feeling something unlike what he’s defined himself as before, and makes it clear how easy it is to become The Black Hood because he’s lost all that defined him. It’s slow and steady in its approach, but it works it in such rich, grimy, detail that you can’t help but to be drawn in.
In Summary:
Dark Circle Comics is making a bold statement with its first book by going with something as gritty and crime drama oriented as this is. And that’s not a bad thing. They’ve got three interesting titles slotted over the next couple of months to start and we’re obviously not getting three books of the same style and nature, but I’m definitely enjoying the serious and strong progression that’s made in exploring the character of Greg here with how, over the course of several months, the loss of his sense of self will allow him to reinvent himself in this new way. There are a slew of challenges ahead, for the character and the creative team, because there are numerous traps to fall into where things will be too easy or obvious. I’m hopeful that with this strong start that we’ll get something that really strikes out into some engaging territory, that has something to say, because that’s what The Black Hood is all about.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dark Circle Comics
Release Date: February 25th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
