You’ll Do Bad Things #1 // Review
She’s frustrated. She’s been seeing a lot of Jimmy. He hasn’t been all that interested, though. After four dates, three dinners and two of her best dresses, she might have expected at least a kiss or...something. He’s not coming up to her place after. She’s upset. In a few panels, he’ll be dead. So maybe he should have gone up to hang out with her in You’ll Do Bad Things #1. Writer Tyler Boss opens a whole new series with artist Adriano Turtulici. The new series gets into the darker side of human imagination in a promising echo of murder/mystery horror tropes.
Elsewhere there’s this writer. Guy named Seth Holms. He had a big hit a decade ago with He Came in With a Smile--a horror book about a series of brutal murders of children. It had been a huge hit, but he didn’t want to be know as the guy who made a fortune off of a fictional serial killer, so he’s been trying to write something that doesn’t feel quite so awful. Hasn’t been able to do so, though. And now it looks like things just might start to get a bit more complicated for him.
Boss weaves a fun initial premise. It’s always awkward to see writers writing about writers. It seems like the single most obvious thing to try to focus on...so it ends up feeling pretty weak. Boss does a pretty good job of it, though. More than being a writer, Seth is a man who is haunted by quite a lot. Boss is wise to focus on that over the guy’s profession...especially as it has been quite some time since he’s been able to write anything salable anyway. The drama feels particularly well-articulated as it progresses into the end of its opening issue.
Turtulici hits the angles of the action quite well. It’s a murder-mystery sort of a thing that’s going on and the art needs to hit the page from stylish angles with clever shadows hanging over everything. The narrative has a tendency to jump around a bit here and there...which is a big challenge that Boss is giving Turtulici. Trying to keep it all cohesive and smooth...gliding along the way it would need to glide along without being derailed by a whole bunch of jump cuts. Turtulici keeps the momentum moving forward even as the narrative is jumping around...it’s a very well-executed visual reality for a rather challenging script.
The big challenge moving forward is going to lie in making certain that the story remains fresh as it progresses forward beyond the initial introductions. The basic premise for the series hasn’t really hit as of the first issue, but it IS present in the promotional info on the mini-series on the Image Comics website and it’s not...it’s not terribly original as a premise, so it’s kind of an awkward situation. It’s a promising opening, but the idea of a murder writer being the inspiration for actual murders is...a bit of a tired premise. Here’s hoping Boss does something interesting with it.
