Blood & Thunder #1 // Review
There’s a fugitive on the loose. Blood Bledsoe is in pursuit. She’s closing-in on the fugitive. She takes aim. She’s ready to fire. Her gun isn’t going to let her, though. She wants to fire buckshot. At point blank range, that’s going to be some very serious damage. Thunder (that’s the name of her gun) isn’t going to let her. So she has to choose something nonlethal. This is only the beginning for Bledsoe in Blood & Thunder #1. Writer Benito Cereno opens a fun, little sci-fi buddy cop adventure with artist E.J. Su.
The fugitive in question is a petty, little low-level criminal that the cops call Herp the Perp. It’s not that difficult to bring him in...even with the problems Thunder has been giving her are a small matter next to the mystery of what Herp had on him when he was arrested. He had stacks and stacks of paper that had been bound in leather. The chief tells her that they were something called “books.” But not like...old STEM manuals or anything like that. They were text involving ancient gods of some sort. Weird. Blood decides to take one from the stack. She’s curious.
Cereno is working with an idea that had been generated by Robert Kirkman for the series. Some of the basic elements of the series aren’t really all that original, though. On the surface it kind of feels like a mash-up between Judge Dredd, Psi Judge Anderson and Rogue Trooper. Kirkman and company just lifted a few ideas from 2000 A.D. and put ‘em in a blender. It works. Actually it kind of feels A LOT like a feature that wouldn’t be entirely out of place in a current issue of 2000 A.D. Only it’s American. It’s cool, though.
Su gives Blood a cool, sexy appearance that doesn’t seem entirely practical in law enforcement, but it DOES look cool without exaggerating the sexuality of the character. So she’s a pretty, young bounty hunter with big, red hair and she’s carrying this huge gun that she’s always having conversations with. The overall design of the mega-city asteroid that serves as the setting is pretty cool too. It’s hard to do a future city and make it look distinct. There have been far too many attempts over the years at the look of a modern mega-city. Su does a pretty good job of giving Blood’s world a distinctly cool look.
Kirkman mentions that the title came from an interview he’d read with Jack Kirby. Nice to see that he’s still getting credit for things this long after he’s passed away. The disagreement between the officer and her gun calls to mind an argument between a protagonist and his car at the beginning of a Philip K. Dick novel. (The protagonist was trying to convince the AI in the car that he WAS, in fact, sober enough to drive. Clever stuff.) Kirkman’s premise lacks the wit of Dick’s throwaway idea, but there’s a LOT in the opening issue that feels derivative. The opening of the series may lack some level of originality, but Cereno makes Blood an appealing enough character to overcome the series’ general lack of originality.
