Drawing Blood #5 // Review
Bookman’s been kidnapped by masked men. The good news is that they don’t have Lithuanian accents. The bad news is that they’ve identified themselves as the Federal Bureau Of Investigation. Things are going to get a lot more complicated for a beloved comic book creator in Drawing Blood #5. Writer David Avallone continues a story with artist Ben Bishop. Color comes to the page courtesy of Simon Gough. As it veers a bit further away from cheaply miming Hollywood, the comic book industry and comic book fandom, the series picks-up a little bit of momentum in its fifth issue.
Agent Walker of the FBI had Bookman picked-up to ask him if he knew anything about a colleague of his named Frank Forrest. Bookman isn’t able to be of much use, so Walker gets quasi-threatening. Then he gets returned to the office of his dying publishing company Siberia Arts...just in time to sign new talent and get a rather important call...they want him in Hollywood. There are a few fires he ned to put out on a film production. It’s a big mess and he’s not getting the time he needs to breathe easily between encounters.
Avallone moves the story around through enough different scenes and locations to keep the story interesting. The comic drama slides through from the FBI to the Lithuanian mafia to L.A. with a sharp sense of action that maintains tension and intensity as Bookman is blown casually through the weird whirlwind of being a wealthy storyteller who is just trying to get through life as best as possible. The fifth issue in the series is fun overall, but it manages to be entertaining without making Bookman seem too terribly interesting. On the one hand, that’s quite an accomplishment. On the other hand...it doesn’t exactly make for a very meaningful experience beyond the weirdness of the events.
Once again, the Kevin Eastman-inspired art continues to find an appealing way to present a story the is essentially a weird mutated amplification of Eastmen’s life. As it is the case that it’s all essentially comic drama. Bishop’s artwork doesn’t have a chance to deliver a whole lot of action to the page, which is fine. The artwork is largely static even when it DOES have a chance to be a bit more kinetic with the action. Bishop does a fine job of rendering dramatic tension, though. There’s a subtlety to the emotional drama that counterpoints some very sharp bits of dramatic framing.
Five issues in and the series still seems to be finding its footing somewhere between comedy, drama and something else altogether. A straight ahead biographical look at co-creator Eastman’s life might be a bit more fun...as would something that really leaned-in to the surrealism of the premise. AS it is, Drawing Blood seems to be. Trying to balance things a bit too much for its own good. It seems to be moving in the general direction of something memorable. That’s enough for now...
Grade: B-
