Black Friday #3

Black Friday #3

Black Caravan/Scout Comics 2021

Written & Coloured by Jon Clark

Illustrated by Travis Williamson

Lettered by April Brown

The demons are tearing their way through Star-Mart devouring everything in their path. Store clerk Javier, one of the last survivors, has a new plan to stop them, but how can anyone survive the day that puts them all in the black? The exciting conclusion is here!

This book just takes one turn for the weird after another and it’s a crazy roller coaster ride of demons hungry for human flesh. When last we left off it was just Javier and Ceci left as the store filled with more and more of these creatures rising from the depths below. Part of me wishes we never find out why this is happening and the other part of me thinks its the perfect ending to the story. I mean what else are you going to do when you are running for your life from demons or beasts from below that don’t seem to take any damage that a mere man can try to inflict upon them. We saw that the shotgun did nothing to them already so they are in for the battle of a lifetime if there’s any hope for them to survive.

I absolutely love how this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see is rather amazing thanks to the dialogue, the narration, the character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter. Seriously to see Javier speak to himself and wonder aloud as he goes through all this is some of the most interesting conversation one can have with oneself. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story and its revelations we are caught in the story’s grip tight like in a vise.

I am rather enjoying how this is being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve and emerge with new information. I love how the layers are all tidied up here and how they work to add this crazy depth and complexity to the story all the way up to the last page. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceptionally well.

I am definitely in love with the interiors here. The crazy familiarity of the style is amazing to me and it really does have a throwback storybook feel to it that brings a flood of emotions and feelings through the page and into the reader. The linework is sensational and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to showcase the detail work is extraordinarily well rendered. That we see backgrounds being utilised throughout and how they manage to enhance the moments while providing depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story is simply magnificent. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is beautifully rendered as well. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows such a wonderful understanding of how colour works.

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I’ve been trying my darnedest not to give anything away that happens in this issue but I will say that normally I feel that when its a story I particularly like there’s always a way to see it continue past the first arc. Not so with this one, I mean sure we could see more but I’d rather not because this gets wrapped up in such a way that it makes perfect sense and there’s really no need for anything else to seen or shown. This is a complete story set in three issues and it’s completely and utterly brilliant from start to finish.