Hollow Heart #03

Hollow Heart #03

Vault Comics 2021

Written & Lettered by Paul Allor

Illustrated by Pual Tucker

EL and Mateo launch their escape, but it immediately falls apart as Mateo’s meticulous planning clashes with EL’s brutal desire to inflict cruelty upon those who were cruel to him. In the end, EL must decide whether to prioritize his own freedom or the destruction of others.

Oh I love the opening here, the fact that the narration has nothing to do with what we’re seeing, not directly anyway, is fantastic. It is also about time we see Donnie’s sex life taking a role in this considering when he and Mateo talked it was in a gay bar. That the story and characterisation are so intricately tied together here is amazing to see and it actually makes me like Donnie a lot more than we’ve seen from in the past. If he can keep letting himself be more vulnerable than perhaps he’ll actually be someone we can get behind and root for. I do see the correlation of the narration and how Donnie locks up his feelings however and that at least is another aspect of Paul’s writing that I am immensely enjoying.

I am enjoying the way that 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 extremely well. I do like that all Mateo’s plans are shot to hell in an instant as El has his own agenda to fulfil before they leave the facility. I’m still waiting to see or learn which person that helped make El a reality is someone who means something important to Mateo. While I may be wildly off base I think that one of those people who make up El was a lover or spouse of his, time will tell if that’s actually the case or if Mateo is just altruistically helping him out. The character development is phenomenal and i’ve touched on various reasons why but it really does help to flesh them all out as real people. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way the interest and intrigue factors continue to rise.

I am a fan of the way that this is being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve and strengthen. There are some wonderfully surprising moments that are among the myriad of reasons I enjoy Paul’s writing. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved very well.

The interiors here are very stylised and while the linework remains fairly thick the detail work is pretty well rendered. I do wish we’d see more backgrounds being utilised to enhance the moments or showcase how small the area they are in is. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective show a nice eye for storytelling. The colour work is amazing. I love seeing the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work. The colour work is what makes the linework shine bright like a diamond, sorry song in my head, it may be silly but its true because it turns the ordinary into something more extraordinary to see.

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So I’m rather eager to see where this is going to go next. Obviously they cannot go back to Mateo’s place and it is going to be near impossible to hide El from public view for long. Plus I’m sure Donnie is going to want revenge for what he was put through during the escape. So now it becomes more of an action adventure thriller as they two go on the run from the facility that is surely going to be hunting them. It is time to ramp up the action folks and see if the two can free El from his suit and help him to regain some of his humanity once more.