The early 1930s: The height of the Great Depression and the beginning of the Dust Bowl. Silvano Luna Del Rio works as a postman in Buttar, Texas. Reeling from a tragic past, with only a gun and a Western novel to his name, Silvano sets out to take back from the country that took so much from him by robbing the first skyscraper West of the Mississippi. By Silvano’s side is an Old West novel featuring famed gunslinger Solomon Eaton. AfterShock Comics’ Undone by Blood is back with a new volume, co-written by Zac Thompson and Lonnie Nadler, drawn by Sami Kivela, colored by Jason Wordie and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
Dan Grote: TWO BEST FRIENDS! WRITING ‘BOUT COMICS! WRITTEN BY! TWO BEST FRIENDS!
Actually I don’t know for a fact whether Zac Thompson and Lonnie Nadler are BFFs, but they sure have written a heck of a lot of comics together. And Matt and I sure have generated a lot of comics-adjacent content over the years, so I’d say that makes us uniquely suited to tackle this-here book. What say you, Matthew?
Matt Lazorwitz: We absolutely have. I mean, we’ve been reading and talking comics for pushing 30 years, and writing about them critically for nigh on a decade now. And it’s nice to get back in the groove.
DG: Indeed, indeed. But seriously, the first volume of Undone by Blood was my favorite comic of 2020, and I couldn’t wait to dive into this new story with this new protagonist in this new time period. What did you think of this first issue, friend of friends?
ML: I try to put aside all preconceptions going into reading a comic, because even the worst creators can produce something shockingly good, and great creators can release a dud. And that last Undone by Blood was tremendous, and I didn’t want it to color my thoughts on what is a completely new series. But I am happy to say I was not disappointed, because this? This is damn good comics.
Deep in the Heart of Texas
DG: After a brief reacquaintance with our friend the gunslinger Solomon Eaton, we’re introduced to this volume’s setting: 1934 in Buttar, Texas. Life isn’t smooth in Buttar. The Great Depression has yet to relinquish its hold. Stores are boarded up. Children are roaming the streets in search of money or food. And Silvano Luna Del Rio is getting ready for the score of a lifetime, robbing the local skyscraper.
We get some great scene setting in these opening pages by Sami Kivela and Jason Wordie, an art team that couldn’t fail to complement each other if they tried. While the Eaton parts of Undone by Blood run heavy on dialogue and exposition (masterfully lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou), Kivela and Wordie show us things are bad in every grubby street urchin, smoking nun, looming crow and newspapers with headlines like “Violent dust storm sweeps into the state” and “Ferguson sees 1,500 Mexicans loaded on trains.”
ML: The breakout panels on that establishing splash draw some strong parallels to what we’re experiencing now. The boarded up barber shop with the shuttering of main streets, and especially the mindset of the sign saying “Texas Farms Need Working Men” while deporting people who are willing to work is … frighteningly unchanged in today’s world.
The dialogue between Silvano and the clerk at the bookshop immediately made me stop and hold my breath. The not just casual but blatant racism of the clerk being surprised that “someone with that color of yours” can speak English clearly, and the fact that Silvano just sort of rolls with it, is awful. Not unexpected for the 1930s, but still awful, and immediately makes me sympathetic to whatever Silvano is going to do.
DG: Read pulps, do crimes, son.
Heist to See You
DG: While the first volume of UBB was a revenge story, this one is a heist. Silvano and his postal worker friend Bud have been staking out the Equites building in a bid to steal … something. As Silvano says at one point, “We don’t even know what the score is yet.” But they’re gonna steal it. Now, as a connoisseur of crime comics and a devotee of the TV show Leverage, how does this aspect of the story strike you so far?
ML: Yeah, so, we all know this is going to end poorly, right? These aren’t the Leverage team, a group of consummate professionals at the top of their game. Even in those cases, the plan usually has some wrinkle they didn’t expect and they have to come up with something on the fly. This is two guys, one who is planning and one who is cocky, assuming the plan is going to work. This is going to go off way more like the robbery in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Pulp than it is like anything on Leverage or in Ocean’s <insert number here>.
A heist that goes off seamlessly is set dressing; it’s never the real drive of a story. The opening of The Dark Knight works because that bank robbery is just a setup for bigger, crazier plans later. No, what makes a heist story interesting is when it looks like it’s going wrong and then it turns around like with Danny Ocean and his crew, or when it goes horribly horribly wrong, like in anything the Coen Brothers have ever touched.
Bud doesn’t strike me as a “thinks on his feet” sort of guy. In another case, I’d expect him to be planning a double cross, or Silvano to be planning to cross him, but nothing in this first issue gives me that impression. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, though.
Between that and the hints from the novel within the book, this is going to end bloody, methinks.
DG: The other big clue something’s gonna go pear-shaped is the number of bullets. Silvano has six, Bud only has three. There’s any number of ways that could spell trouble. Bud could run out of bullets and get shot. Silvano could get overconfident and waste his six and then get shot. A third thing could happen. It’s the kind of thing designed to drive a feller’ to overguessing.
ML: Oh, I think Bud is going to get shot or do the shooting. They’re going in without masks! And Bud bumped into the son of Mr. Wright, the building owner, and made a scene! No good of any of that is going to come. Granted, Silvano bumped into Wright himself, but judging by Wright’s demeanor, I think he doesn’t look at anyone close enough to remember them.
DG: Going into a building without masks! In the year of our lord 2021, er, 1934? Unconscionable!
The (non)Horror
DG: The first UBB was part of a wave of nonhorror work Thompson and Nadler put out the past couple years, along with “Age of X-Man” and Yondu over at Marvel. Now that UBB is coming out nearly simultaneously with stuff like Thompson’s I Breathed a Body, how do you feel like their nonhorror stuff stacks up to the horror stuff they made their bones on?
ML: I have to say, I read the review copy of this not long after reading the new issue of I Breathed a Body, and even though that’s mushrooms, not meat, the butcher shop window with all the hanging pieces of meat? I wasn’t at all worrying about them coming to life and attacking Silvano. Nope, not one bit…
DG: I would not have been surprised to see one of those sausage links say, “I have no lips but I must speak.”
ML: I’ve liked pretty much all the stuff I’ve read by Thompson and Nadler, together or separately. But the original UBB is hands down my favorite. It was whip smart, paced brilliantly and they worked perfectly with their artist.
Their horror stuff tends toward body horror, and they’ve found ways to work that into some of their superhero stuff, specifically Cable and the Apocalypse backups from X-Men: Black, and I think the blending of genres is a cool way for them to go. I think these are two guys who can work across genre, and I’m glad they’re not pigeonholing themselves into one.
Git Along, Lil’ Miscellany
- The nod to Vol. 1, with the package labeled for Sweetheart, AZ? That’s how you do Easter eggs; it’s not clobbering anyone over the head, but stands out like a flare to those in the know.
- Equites, the name of the building, in ancient Rome was a class of citizens who originally formed the cavalry of the Roman army and at a later period were a wealthy class of great political importance. Sounds like some Court of Owls shit.
- This comic has a fart joke in it. Nothin’ to add to that, just thought you should know.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts WMQ&A: The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
