DANCING WITH THE DRAGON #2, available from Scout Comics on December 1st, 2021, puts Connor in a bad spot when a greedy move turns his customers against him.
The Details
- Written By: Rob MacKinnon
- Art By: Luca Casalanguida
- Colors By: Natalia Nesterenko
- Letters By: Joel Rodriguez
- Cover Art By: Luca Casalanguida
- Cover Price: $3.99
- Release Date: December 1, 2021
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Was It Good?
Crime fiction works best when it veers into the extremes. When things go very, very right or really, really wrong. The first issue in this series was a soft recommend because it set up the characters and the main plot but it wasn’t clear which direction it was headed. It felt tepid. Here, we see the story (as you can see from the cover) veers straight towards things going really, really wrong, and it’s an enthralling read.
Read through to the next section for more specifics about the plot.
Connor’s a ne’er-do-well with more heart than brains, and it’s clear from the excellent character work by MacKinnon that Connor has proper motivations but lacks a moral compass. He makes wrong choices with good albeit selfish intentions, and you’re torn between rooting for him and shaking your head at the incredibly dangerous risks he takes. The situation is hard-boiled gangster crime, but it’s the complicated character of Connor that carries the story through.
Beyond the character work, MacKinnon’s plot covers a lot of territory in this issue. There are more than an average number of scenes for a 22-page comic and it largely works. That said, MacKinnon covers so much ground via jumping back and forth between multiple points in the timeline and it muddles the flow of the comic. Frequently, I had to stop and flip back a few pages to clarify if this scene is before the other scene but after the next scene. It would have served the flow better to reduce the number of timelines to just one or two.
The art is a great fit for this material through the engaging use of camera angles in every panel. Casalanguida picks the best time to lean over a character’s shoulder or zoom in to a characters eyes to get the mood of the scene to play up the drama as much as possible.
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]
To get to know Connor and how he wormed his way into this mess, first read our DANCING WITH THE DRAGON #1 review.
We begin with an introduction to Marcus, an agent for FBI’s financial crimes division. Through a fellow agent, he hears that Fat Sam, the money launderer Connor has been chauffeuring around, died of an overdose. Marcus knows how important Fat Sam was to a number of money laundering operations and it won’t be long before somebody steps in to fill the void.
Flash forward 9 days and we see Connor getting picked up by the goons of one of his clients. We learn through Connor’s bloody interrogation that he picked up Fat Sam’s business but made the bonehead move of skimming from his clients’ money… or so we’re told. Flash back a few weeks and we see how Connor and Blythe got a hold of Fat Sam’s phone and how they reverse engineered his business with the intention of taking it over. Flash forward a few weeks and we see how Connor wormed his way onto Fat Sam’s client list with equal parts preparation and smooth talking. It’s during one of his first business meetings that we’re introduced to Ying, one of the people responsible for Connor’s downfall.
We conclude the issue with an interrogation that takes an anxious turn, the FBI identifying Connor from his first meeting and making plans of their own against him, and Marcus showing off his own smooth-talking skills.
Final Thoughts
DANCING WITH THE DRAGON #2 is a tense, anxious crime drama about a crook with a good heart who takes one too many chances. The writing for each scene is excellent, however, the multitude of back-and-forth time skips interrupted the pacing and flow. The art plays up the drama in every panel for maximum tension. This is a great pick for crime fiction fans.
Score: 8/10
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