The Peril of the Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery #2 – Chris Condon, Writer; Jacob Phillips, Artist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: Condon and Phillips are one of the best-known creative teams to work on a Vertigo book in the current era, best known for their acclaimed “That Texas Blood”, which will be returning this summer. But first, they’re shifting time and place to a supernatural noir set in early 20th century New York, between the World Wars. Ezra Cain, a shell-shocked veteran who spent time missing in action behind enemy lines, is now a private detective juggling two cases. The first has him trying to find the location of the husband of an old German woman, who suddenly disappeared without a trace from his job as a night watchman at the Museum of Natural History. That leads Cain down the path of the Brutal Dark, a mysterious society that seems to operate entirely in German – just as dark forces start to emerge across the Atlantic Ocean as well. But that’s only the B-plot compared to the unholy forces that are gathering.
Cain’s search for the truth behind the Anvil of Hephaestus leads him to his old friend, Professor John Morris, who was one of the scientists who discovered the anvil years earlier – and encountered the strange automatons guarding it. There’s a great sense of tension to these segments, but there’s also a surprising sense of warmth and familiarity as Cain and Morris catch up and we get a look into who Ezra Cain was before he became the hardened PI he is today. That’s one of the most interesting things about this comic. For all the hard-boiled segments, the series never loses sight of what drives its main character and those around him, and there’s a three-page segment of Cain’s time during the Great War that’s one of the most harrowing action scenes in any comic in a while. This series is being set up as a series of minis, with each being a stand-alone case, and I hope it returns as many times as these creators want it to.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes
