There are several parts at play in this story that keep it
grounded in reality, even if that reality is the underbelly of society. We’re
introduced to a cast of characters in this issue as well, which is typically of
drug/heist movies, lots of cogs all in motion waiting for the reader to get
caught in-between the gears. Loose Ends
is a surprisingly good read and an impressive addition to 12 Gauge Comics’ library.
The timeline of the story jumps around a bit, but we start
off with our main character Sonny parked outside of a phone booth in the parking lot of a dive
bar. He makes a shady call on the phone letting the person on the other end
know that he’ll be alone as soon as he takes care of a few things. As night
sets in a waitress from the bar decides to pay him a visit. She cracks a joke
about the empty beer cans sitting outside of his car and he buys a five dollar
bucket of beer from her with a hundred. Sonny’s that cool guy that lets people
keep the change and sure enough our waitress jumps to it, but as she leaves he
asks if Kim is working.
In a flashback we see how Sonny got to the dive bar after
being offered a job from an old friend to run dope. The basic plot is that this
friend of Sonny’s has moved up in the drug command and is now a major player in
the heroin “game.” Back at the bar Kim is being harassed by a big football
jersey wearing piece of crap of a man. Our kind waitress shoes him away and tells him
yet again to keep his hands to himself.
She lets her know about the mystery man on the porch. Kim decides that
she’ll be the one to deliver the beer to Sonny, who turns out to be the father
of her kid. From there the story gets really interesting and very adult.
The story is a bit slow to start and the introduction of so
many characters makes it difficult to really know whose going to be a major
player and sticking around till issue four. Sonny is the obvious choice, but
due to the fact that his face is hidden for most of the issue you won’t know
that he’s the same guy until the third act of the issue. Even still writer Jason
Latour manages to build an interesting story with lots of layers for the story
to unravel in the future issues. Latour avoids a lot of typical drug storylines
and manages to find one that as interesting without being overtly graphic with
drug use.
The art teeters back and forth between great and confusing,
which isn’t a bad thing. There are several scenes which are laid out very
interesting and look incredibly sharp due to Rico Renzi’s coloring, but then
pages like the flashback are muddled and don’t play a key role in the story.
Artist Chris Brunner does a good job overall, but you can really tell the pages
he wanted to draw and the ones he had to draw giving the book a choppy read.
This is a great first issue for a mature comic reader. I
definitely wouldn’t recommend it to teens or young readers since it’s grounded
in a world that few will ever experience (myself included). I suppose that’s
the charm of the book is that audience reading it will never have any contact
with drug’s or bar fights that end badly. This is a strong first issue that
didn’t disappoint and I can’t wait to finish the series already.
Written by: Jason Latour
Art by: Chris Brunner
Color by: Rico Renzi
Publisher: Keven Gardner
12 Gauge Comics