By: Jonathan Ross (writer & creator), Tommy Lee Edwards (artist & creator) & John Workman (letters)
The Story: As the war between vampires and Prohibition-era NYC mafia families gets hot, the cops and aliens from space enter the fray.
What’s Good: I wish Tommy Lee Edwards did more comic art because I could look at this stuff all day. His art is a wonderful combination of rough and sketchy where you can see the individual pencil lines in the character’s faces and very intricate and detailed backgrounds. It’s a great combination for a crime-themed book. I would also say that this is a great way to do photo reference. Edwards is clearly using some pictures as a guide here, but it looks good and I didn’t spend the entire issue trying to figure out what B-movie actors he was using.
The story is still ramping up in this second issue (out of five). The first issue (from what I remember of it, more on that below) had established that the vampires were moving in on the mafia families. This issue introduces a shipwrecked alien to the story and also some crooked cops. This would have the makings of a good crime/mafia comic anyway, but adding vampires and aliens just makes it better. Your results may vary, but I enjoyed it. The scenes of the mobsters fighting with the vampires were really cool!
What’s Not So Good: Let’s start with the release schedule. I reviewed Turf #1 WAY back on April 12. That’s almost 3 months between issues and that is just way too long. I appreciate that stuff like this happens with creator-owned books, but it really makes me lose track of the narrative and punishes the folks who buy these in single issues versus waiting for the trade. It is especially annoying to have to wait this long for issue #2. They should have just held the first issue back for a month or so.
The only story quibble I had was how quickly one of the mobsters falls into befriending the crashed alien. To set things up, he is being chased by vampires and his car crashes. As he’s crawling away from the vampires, he crawls right into the crash of the alien spaceship and one of the wounded aliens kills the vampires. And suddenly the mobster is the alien’s buddy, he’s checking to make sure that it’s okay, letting it put these weird crab things of his face, etc. Not sure if I’d be quite so quick to trust an alien I found in the forest, much less let it put alien-crab-things on me.
Conclusion: A promising second issue, but this comic has lost momentum with the delayed release. However, it is hard to hate too much on a comic with art this nice because in a year…. that art will remain and no one will care about the screwed up release schedule.
Grade: C+
– Dean Stell