The Legend of Joe Moon

Posted: Tuesday, October 9, 2007
By: Steve Saville

Writer(s): Gonzalo Ventura
Artist(s): Manuel and Leonardo Silva
Publishers: Pitbros Productions
Address: 9402 Dallum Drive, Austin, Texas 78753, USA.
Price: US $2

This comic is set in the wild west and I mean the wild west. This first edition is a raw and violent introduction to a bounty hunter main character who is only marginally higher on the evolutionary ladder than the low lives he hunts down.

I need to point out that this 16 page black and white comic was reviewed electronically and is available for purchase on line from the link listed above on a print per order basis.

I always struggle to review a comic in this format because I lose the ability to physically flick from page to page, for me some of the energy is lost when I can’t actually hold the comic, I am somehow distanced. This is a shame because if this comic has one thing it certainly has energy. Not all of this is a pleasant type of energy [in fact almost none of it is] but despite the electronic format there is no avoiding the fact that this comic explodes such is the intensity of the action.

Essentially Joe Moon [the name is an important hint to the ‘other’ side of his personality] is a hard drinking, violent and cold bounty hunter, haunted by nightmares of a traumatic childhood and dealing with his own devils [ and he has a few] through heavy drinking and by hunting down and killing the wilder deviants that inhabit his part of the wild west.

In 16 pages we get murder, violence and sex in liberal doses. Be warned this is not for the squeamish, the rape scene is an extended one and is one of the two main ‘actions’ presented here.

Everything about this comic is wild and untamed from the Clint Eastwood/ Fistful of Dollars appearance of Joe Moon through to the language of the two scum bags he is on the trail of.

Put simply he is out to save a damsel in distress but somehow as this first chapter closes we are far from convinced that she has actually been saved because Joe’s dark side, heavy drinking and bleak outlook indicates that it is more of a frying pan into the fire scenario for the already brutalised lady in question.

The presentation of the 16 pages has a good deal to commend it. The considered layout adds to the explosive energy and creates a feeling of the action leaping off of the page [or screen] The range of angle, frame size and page layout is a real highpoint. The fact that the pages are uncluttered with a minimal number of individual frames enhances the action and really throws it in your face, Subtle it ain’t.

The characters presented are damaged or being damaged, the intention is to create a raw world and build on that in future editions. It must be said that this creation of a savage base has been effectively and irrevocably laid. I feel certain that things are going to get a whole lot worse for all involved before they improve.

In a Word: Eastwoodesque.

---

Got a comment or question about Small Press?
Leave at message at the Independent/Small Press Forum.

---