Redneck starts its second arc jumping eight months ahead from the previous issue. The family is in hiding. JV is on guard duty 24/7, Bartlett is on punishment (of sorts), Perry is cheating at cards. New vampire Landry is learning the ropes but still not particularly welcome.
There’s a lot of exposition in the comic. Lots of vampire information. Not a lot of personality though. Bartlett narrates but without having anything to do in the comic, except chastise Perry once and pal around with Landry.
It’d probably be more engaging if Estherren’s art weren’t all of a sudden kind of lazy. His style hasn’t changed, he’s just not keeping the energy up with some of it. But he’s still great on other stuff. It’s uneven in a way he’s never exhibited before.
In just six issues, Redneck has gone from being exciting to not to exciting again to not again. This arc is off to a not exciting start.
Redneck starts its second arc jumping eight months ahead from the previous issue. The family is in hiding. JV is on guard duty 24/7, Bartlett is on punishment (of sorts), Perry is cheating at cards. New vampire Landry is learning the ropes but still not particularly welcome.
Redneck finishes its first arc with a whole lot of exposition. Cates basically uses the final third of the comic to do a pitch for the next arc, without revealing anything about it except who’s going to be in it.
Cates brings Redneck around almost immediately in this issue. He gets the sense of urgency back. He gets the character dynamic back–Bartlett needs someone to talk off, it doesn’t work with the kid. It’s like Cates needs there to be conflict to get character development. Great art from Estherren; Redneck’s exciting again.
A flashback issue. Vampires in the Old West. Only, not much of them because–besides an initial battle scene, with the characters narrating from the present–Cates writes the rest of it as summary. It’s all right–great characterization for the narration–but it doesn’t give Estherren much to do. Western adventure it isn’t. Turns out Cates isn’t ready to give away any secrets–something the characters talk about way too much–and it’s all setup for revelations next issue. It’s solidly produced, but mostly show, no substance.
Redneck is just getting better, which is sort of surpising given–while good, Cates didn’t seem too focused on mythology building. Even here, when he lays some of the groundwork for a reveal, it’s subtle. It’s in the dialogue, more for fleshing out characters than exposition; only then it turns out to be a very big reveal at the end with a lot of history. At this point, I’m confident Cates knows where he’s going and probably has a good route to get there.