“Blood Debt: First, Do No Harm”
Creative Staff:
Story: Fred Van Lente
Art: Vincenzo Frederici
Colors: Dearbhla Kelly
Letterer: Simon Bowland
What They Say:
A mysterious woman staggers into a clinic for criminals and collapses from her injuries! * The crooked head surgeon is convinced that he has JENNIFER BLOOD sedated and under his control and plans to sell the most wanted woman in the world to the highest bidder! But another of his patients is a legendary hit man on his last legs with other plans for Blood–and the trauma ward starts to overflow when they team up!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the opening storyline wrapping up in the previous issue, I’ll admit surprise as I figured this was just going to be a limited series, or several limited series since first issues are always popular. But we get a new storyline going here that stems from that finale and it works well. Fred Van Lente has long done well with these kinds of stories and this one extends the riff of the opening storyline and finds new ways to exploit the idea. Vincenzo Frederici definitely does a great job of capturing these kinds of characters and situations well through the particular lens here while also leaning into the kind of leatherbound sexuality that comes from a character like Blood.
With Blood having survived her encounter with mob-town, she’s found herself now in someplace quite unexpected; an underground hospital. Quite literally underground as it’s based in a silo where the head doctor handles clients for a particularly powerful woman named Platinum. She’s keen on getting her hands on Blood – alive – and the doctor doubly so because Platinum can get him a proper medical career once again instead of living out of a silo and handling only dangerous and disturbing criminals. It’s a fun if familiar setup and one where we get a handle on a few shady characters, from a man named Aguiler that’s dying himself to some of those sent by Platinum to collect Blood. Blood, for her part, is unconscious for a chunk of this but luckily wakes up in time when the shooting starts as another group has come to kill Aguiler and that gets her moving.
It’s not the most well-laid-out silo from the few hallways we see, but the chaos works well as Blood and Aguiler – in their johnny’s – team up for the short term. Mostly because Blood is enjoying reading through patient charts with their criminal history and killing all of them. Her mission in mob town wasn’t a one-off, this is who she is at this point and intends to carry through. And we even see how there’s a good cruel streak to her as she won’t kill Aguiler because he’s already slowly dying and in pain and can’t go to a proper hospice to end it. On the plus side, he sees her as a way of redemption and death by offering her a list and locations of a number of criminals she can kill that she would miss otherwise – but only if she kills him when it’s all said and done. It’s an amusing pairing and it’s just fun because we get more personality out of Blood here than we did in the first five issues as she’s able to just be who she’s presenting as.
In Summary:
The opening storyline for this was fun but it was light on the actual character side of Blood with how she was infiltrating the town. I liked it for what it did offer and it was fun. Getting more was a bit unexpected overall but this one is starting off in a way that definitely clicks and reminds me of a lot of indie comics from the late 80s and early 90s in a good way for me. It’s got a playful “raw” feeling to it with all the blood and violence, it plays goofy with the sexuality this time around, and just runs with the concept and hopes we keep up with it as the table setting. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of Blood and Aguiler, though I’ll easily admit that I’m not going to care for his backstory or humanizing him. Just run with it as bad guy helping someone kill other bad guys and go with it.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: March 16th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
