Savage Circus #5

Savage Circus #5

Heavy Metal Comics 2021

Written by Brendan Columbus

Illustrated by Al Barrionuevo

Coloured by Candice Han

Lettered by Dave Sharpe

The town of Basin Bay is under attack! A heist underway by a group of thieves! Strange creatures on the loose! The police are outnumbered! How is the mysterious man named Lewis Savage going to help turn the tide?

Now it’s been a hot minute since I’ve reviewed this book and I’m thrilled to be back to it. Now Brady and his girlfriend Michelle, the former Chief of Police’s daughter, are going after the circus animals as well as the group of thieves, you can’t get to one group without going through the other. It’s one hell of a read to be honest with you as you never quite know what is going to be taking place at any given moment in time. It’s one of the reasons that I really enjoy this as much as I do, the unpredictability of the story itself. The other is that it seems that there are some extremely creative ways to be killed but everyone is concerned here. I am really impressed with the way this is being told from every angle and aspect and that we see more than simply from one viewpoint.

I love 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 exceptionally well. The character development we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a marvellous job in fleshing out their personalities even further. The pacing here is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story we’re taken to places we never knew we wanted to visit.

I really like the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. A good, nay a great story will constantly find new entry points where avenues can open up to be explored and this one does that in some truly wonderful ways. All of these aspects add some great depth, dimension and complexity to the story and it just keeps the readers’ attention on the page.

There are some very traditional comic book style illustrations happening here, which of course are embellished rather nicely. From the animals that we see, some of whom are in costumes and others which are not which make it hard to determine which are circus and which are opportunistic scavengers are depicted exceptionally well. The linework is clean, crisp and strong and the varying weights and techniques that we see being utilised to create this level of detail throughout is sensational. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. I like how we see backgrounds being utilised and how they work within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. By the by the elephants and giraffes at the bottom of each page with the big top is ingenious. The colour work is brilliantly rendered. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show such a great understanding of how colour works.

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This is going to be one of those books that is fun to read in single issues but reads better as a trade. I hate to say that but I have a feeling that’s true so if you’ve missed this series up until this point don’t worry there’s a copy of the first five issues collected out that you can get as well. It is a great unique little concept that just captures the readers’ mind, imagination and creativity perfectly, thanks to the spectacular writing, strong characterisation and superbly dynamic interiors.