Blue Estate‘s second issue changes everything up. Gone is the private investigator. Now the protagonist is Rachel, the Steven Seagal stand-in’s wife. The issue is split between her and her brother.

It’s a fast read–without the narration, it moves speedily.

Osborne does a better job with the brother than the sister. He establishes characters, ground situation, all in dialogue, all without it getting too expository.

For Rachel though, Osborne has secrets and revelations to get through. He handles them all right; he’s keeping secrets not just from the characters, but from the reader as well. The purposeful misdirection is really obvious… especially since he’s willing to do a 180 and reveal other details. Sometimes on the same page.

The book has four artists working on sections. I can usually identify Nathan Fox but the art flows quite nicely together. The changes give the series a fluid feel.

CREDITS

One Day At A Time; writers, Viktor Kalvachev, Andrew Osborne and Kosta Yanev; artists, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, Kalvachev and Robert Valley; colorist, Kalvachev; editor, Philo Northrup; publisher, Image Comics.

What a cool crime comic.

It’s hard to identify who’s responsible for the plot—the book has two story credits and one script credit—but it’s definitely peculiar. The narrator of Blue Estate is a two-bit private investigator. But he’s not a Bogart-type, he’s an overweight TV and action movie geek whose dad runs the police’s major crimes division. So he knows the lingo, knows what’s going on, just doesn’t seem (this issue’s impression suggests) to know what to do about it.

His “case” involves the Russian mob, a closest gay action star (who looks a lot like Steven Seagal) and corrupt cops.

Scriptwriter Andrew Osborne does a great job with the narration; it’s the private investigator standard, but made far more interesting by the speaker not being the standard.

The narrator would be comical, but Osborne and the artists don’t ever let Blue Estate become a joke.

CREDITS

The Rachel Situation; writers, Viktor Kalvachev, Andrew Osborne and Kosta Yanev; artists, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, Kalvachev, Paul Maybury and Robert Valley; colorist, Kalvachev; editor, Philo Northrup; publisher, Image Comics.