That Texas Blood #21 // Review
It’s March 19, 2007. Sherif Joe Bob Coates is getting a call. It’s a bit of an interruption Joe was just watching history happen on TV. Now he’s got to answer the phone. But who could be calling so late at night? It had better be important to interrupt the news from Iraq. It turns out something is going on at Allison Ranch. The Sherif has got work to do in That Texas Blood #21. Writer Chris Condon and artist Jacob Phillips start a whole new plot arc for the relatively long-running series as “Hell Comes to Allison Ranch.”
Allison Ranch is the largest cattle ranch in the United States. Mary Allison is the eldest in the Allison family. She figures that entitles her to some of the family fortune, but her father is a bit more concerned that her younger brother take control of everything. That doesn’t sit right with Allison. She knows that the family fortune is stashed on the ranch and she knows how to get it. She’s going to need some help, though. She’s going to need help from some rather disreputable people if she’s going to be able to get what’s rightfully hers.
Condon set up a respectable heist with a group of disreputable people who all seem very interesting in different ways. The central antagonists of the story seemed to be pretty well situated by the end of the first issue of the new plot arc. Meanwhile, the sheriff's life is moving on, and there are various things going on in his personal and professional life that hit the page in different ways. The ongoing serial continues to find interesting angles here and there as a whole new conflict arises. The overall pacing for the first part of a new story feels like it has found a firm footing that should serve the rest of the plot arc quite well.
Phillips is required to work with a rather large ensemble of different characters that I'll have to find their own place on the page. Thankfully, Phillips is really good at making sure that there's just the right amount of space for everybody. Everybody has their own distinct presence in page and panel. It all feels remarkably well executed as the story begins. The challenge moving forward is going to lie in keeping it all visually dynamic while maintaining a take control under the tension of the drama.
A heist on the largest cattle ranch in the United States seems like it could be really interesting both visually and dramatically. There's a lot of foreshadowing of different things that could happen in the course of the story. It's not necessarily going to fall apart the way one might expect for a heist like this. But that's part of the fun. Heist stories have been echoing through popular fiction for decades. Even if the script doesn't necessarily play with one's expectations for this type of story the fact that it doesn't do so is also interesting. So it's a story like this could be really fun regardless of how it's executed.
