Blood & Thunder #13 // Review
Bledsoe is in solitary confinement. She’s writing simple advice to the next person in case she doesn’t make it. That advice is written in blood underneath a tabletop. She’s going to try to get out of her cell. It’s going to be messy. It’s going to be dangerous. It’s going to get ugly in Blood & Thunder #13. Writer Benito Cereno ad artist E.J. Su start a whole new plot arc for Bledsoe in another issue featuring the work of colorist Msassyk. It’s a quick and brutal issue that seems to be exploring much more than the usual prison break drama.
It’s known as the IPF Correctional Community. But it’s not exactly a community for someone in solitary confinement. Still...Bledsoe HAS been making friends. There’s a guard who is able to give her some very valuable information: the paperwork went through. It’s going down soon. Tomorrow. On the underside of the facility. Bledsoe is going to have move-up the escape plans. She’s going to have to hustle if she’s going to be able to survive. She has an idea of how to escape. That’s not going to be a problem. What IS going to be a problem is evading capture AFTER she’s escaped...
Cereno opens the next chapter in the series with interesting pacing. The 12th issue established the Bledsoe was going to prison. The first few pages of the 13th issue outline exactly what's going on with her incarceration. It's a very simple and very small canvas that the writer is working with the respect to where it is that she is. This allows things to really explode. A huge portion of the issue is one long, extended action sequence. Thanks to a carefully-rendered couple of pages establishing the nature of the incarceration at the beginning of the issue, that sudden explosion of action that rushes through most of the rest of the issue feels really satisfying. It's strikingly good scripting.
Su isn't it given a whole lot of room to move around in. This is, after all, a prison. Much of the early going of the issue is set in solitary confinement. Nevertheless, the claustrophobic nature of the cell that Bledsoe is in really helps establish a starting point for the extended action sequence that dominates the issue. With a mood fully established in the first couple of pages, Su is able to move things quite efficiently through a very kinetic and somewhat exhilarating action sequence.
The brutality of the most of the issue might come as a bit of a shock. It's a lot of hand-to-hand combat. Let's hasn't had a whole lot of opportunity for that in the past. So it's kind of cool seeing her really let loose in us an extended action sequence where she's just using her hands and feet and her body to defend herself as she's escaping from prison. Msassyk’s colors follow the shadowy mood of the prison and ad to it with an impressive texture and illumination.
