BLOOD ON SUNSET #1 – Review

BLOOD ON SUNSET #1, from Source Point Press on January 6th, 2022, imagines an alternate, mid-Century Los Angeles where gangsters rubbed elbows with celebrities and supernatural monsters.

The Details

• Written By: Mark D’Anna
• Art By: Arjuna Susini
• Colors By: Vittorio Astone
• Letters By: Andworld Design
• Cover Art By: Arjuna Susini, Vittorio Astone
• Cover Price: $3.99 (physical)
• Release Date: January 6, 2022

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Was It Good?

BLOOD ON SUNSET #1 is an intriguing and fun stab (no pun intended) at historical fiction. Set in post-WWII era Los Angeles where gangsters abound and murderous monsters are simply part of their crew, it’s to like this detective noir story when it gets so many elements from multiple genres right.

The story falls squarely in line with a detective noir story in the same vein as Raymond Chandler’s famous works. You get a hard-boiled detective with a checkered past, a femme fatale who is in trouble after association with the wrong crowd puts her too close to a murder, and the long shadows in nearly every panel practically serve as a third character to amp up the smoldering atmosphere.

The twist here is the addition of supernatural monsters to the mix. That’s certainly not new. A lot of the tone feels like a mix of HBO’s Cast A Deadly Spell mixed with Showtime’s Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with building on previous works, but the question then becomes does this issue do it better or at least stand apart? In short, yes.

If you’re going to tackle detective noir, supernatural or otherwise, the art has to capture the shadows and set the smoky, smoldering mood. Thankfully, the art team succeeds in doing so. The atmosphere in nearly every scene is thick with the weight of secrets and memories. That’s just a fancy way of saying you feel like something is always about to happen or the characters in the panel are thinking about what already happened. The art projects that mood, and it helps establish the setting perfectly.

Keep scrolling for a closer look at the covers, or Click Here to jump right to the story description with some spoilers.

What’s It About?

[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]

We begin with a late-night call to a shoddy bar in the middle of Los Angeles. Private Investigator Clint Braddock receives a call from an old girlfriend, Beverly, asking for help. She’s with famed gangster Bugsy Siegel, and he’s been savagely killed. Braddock meets her to find out what happened.

Through Braddock’s narration, we learn Braddock and Beverly were once a couple, Braddock used to be a cop before a supernatural burden got him kicked off the force, and Siegel was killed by something not human. In this version of Earth, creatures known as feeders exist who kill and eat humans to satisfy a savage hunger.

Braddock finds an object in the carnage linked to his past, and he suspects the killing may be either an attempt to frame him or a message to get his attention. He tells Beverly to pack her things so they can get away before the police arrive and find time to figure out what’s going on.

We conclude the issue with Braddock confirming he’s linked to the murder, Siegel’s death quickly becoming a topic of interest in the criminal underworld, and a close look at a feeder’s handiwork.

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