SOUTHSIDE #1, available from Advent Comics on November 20th, 2019, follows Dalton Malone, the roughest, toughest, baddest man the mean streets of Washington D.C. have ever seen. When the local crime boss takes out Malone’s friends, it’s time to go to war.
The Details
- Written By: Tony Kittrell
- Art By: Chepe Ríos
- Colors By: P.H. Fuller
- Letters By: LetterSuids
- Cover Art By: Cristian Docolomansky
- Cover Price: $2.99
- Release Date: November 20, 2019
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Was It Good?
Hoo Whee! That’s the good stuff right there. SOUTHSIDE #1 is that type of rough-and-tumble, macho storytelling that gets your blood pumping with action, attitude, and raw power. If you’ve never heard of the main character or the title, imagine the unapologetic badassery of 70s/80s action flicks like Shaft and Superfly but drawn in the powerful style of early Image Comics. It’s pure testosterone-driven machismo from start to finish.
We’ll break this down into character development and plot.
The main character, Dalton Malone, is an unstoppable force who’s seemingly fearless against every gang, mobster, and sidewalk criminal who dares to oppose him. That said, Malone isn’t magically invulnerable. He can be beaten. He can be captured. And you sense that he can be killed. What’s impossibly heroic about Malone isn’t his ability to avoid all harm, but his ability to push through the harm, even when it hits him hard. It’s his spirit that makes him heroic.
The plot is mostly good (Read on through to the next section if you want more details). Every scene works to move Malone along the string of criminals to get to his ultimate goal of revenge against a crime lord. The action is thrilling and stakes are palpable.
The story, however, stumbles on two fronts. First, there are a few back-and-forth time jumps that don’t quite line up. It was confusing to understand who Malone was confronting and when. Flashbacks are fine as long as they follow a parallel path to the main story, but this one had more than one out of sequence, and it lost me. Second, the main crux of Malone’s revenge is the death of two people, but it’s not clear one of them had died (the bartender) until you hear about it two-thirds of the way through the issue. When you fill in the mental blanks of what happened, Malone’s motivations make total sense, but an important plot point that instigates the entire story shouldn’t be indirectly revealed past the halfway point.
Still, there’s just too much fun to be had in this issue, and the strength of the entertainment factor is enough to help get past the narrative flaws without too much effort.
“What about the art?” you ask. Well, it’s excellent. The art style is reminiscent of early Image Comics with curvy women, muscular men, and clothes that are way too tight on everyone. The colors look great, the linework is crisp and clean, and everything about the way this comic “moves” practically forces you to hear Isaac Hayes singing the theme to Shaft in your head.
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]
Dalton Malone is a man on a mission. Walking the mean streets of Washing D.C., Malone hunts down one criminal after another, working his way up the ranks of the criminal underworld until he gets to those responsible for the death of his friends.
Eventually, Malone shoots, punches, and kicks his way through gang after gang until one name comes to the surface – Leroy “Junkyard” Brown, D.C.’s most notorious underworld kingpin. When Junkyard sends his hired guns to jump Malone and bring him in for asking too many questions, Malone’s night goes from bad to worse.
We conclude the issue with a bloody interrogation, snitches who get more than stitches, and a declaration of war.
Final Thoughts
SOUTHSIDE #1 is the modern-day spiritual successor to Shaft with a new character and story execution that practically drips with testosterone-fueled badassery. While the narrative structure has some confusing spots, the art and the action are so entertaining, any structural flows are easy to overlook.
Score: 8.5/10
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