Bleeding Hearts #1 // Review
Poke’s having trouble with his heart. It’s doing something that it’s not supposed to be doing and he doesn’t know how. He DOES, however, know what human heart tastes like. He knows the symphony of diffierent textures and mouth-feels. He also knows that.he’s been feeling sick lately. Which is a bit weird for a zombie. The weirdness s only beginning for Poke in Bleeding Hearts #1. Writer Deniz Camp and artist Stipan Morian show that there’s still some life in the 50+ year-old George Romero-founded zombie genre. Color comes to the page courtesy of Matt Hollingaworth. The inner emotional complexity of zombification continues to find a great deal of appeal in a new series.
His full names is Mouse-Pokes-Golf-Ball-Out-Of Head-Hole. People just call him Poke, though. Mush is trying to explain to Poke that he can’t get sick if he’s already dead. It’s well beyond the point of sickness. He’s eating human flesh. It’s pretty much over for him and everyone else in the group.. Only thing is...Poke isn’t feeling too happy about a lot of things lately. Or...as Mush tells hm, “You’ve been acting like a total tool lately and it’s unsettling.” So....Poke is unsettling...to zombies...
The basic foundations that Camp is working with aren’t exactly fresh or new or original or anything like that. The monster-that-doesn’t-want-to-be-a-monster has been done before. The zombie that doesn’t want to be a zombie has been done before as well. There’s some strange alchemy in the emotional core of what it is that Camp is working with. Poke comes across as a deeply relatable character...deling with living in a culture that he feels he doesn’t fit into as everyone else sems perfectly comfortable with the ghoulish behavior that they all have to live with.
Morian treads lightly along a vry narrow path btween totally relatable human emotions and the horror of a culture that is constantly easting on the dead. The consumption of everything at the end of the world restlessly roams across the page as Poke and his society are introduced in clever bits of Camp’s monologue. There is a profound mix of different moods, which reached the page.Morian does a brilliant job of capturing whimsical humor, gallows humor, casual moments, and deeply disturbing drama. It all fits on the page really well without clashing and overcrowding everything visually. And above all it maintains a narrative momentum that makes this one of them more promising new titles to come out out of the newDC Vertigo. Hollingsworth’s colors mix the subtlety of muted, grey dead flesh against the smears of red blood that listlessly wander across the page. It's a deeply atmospheric visual.
Poke comes across as a sparkly compelling character. There's a lot of subtlety and nuance in his characterization both in his inner monologue and and the emotion written across his face. There is a great deal of intensity in it all.
