A comiXologist recommends
Blood Feud #1

A story about a couple of good ol’ buddies taking on the legions of hell and damnation has become sort of its own subgenre in the big picture of horror.  Like Sherlock and Watson with all their history instead of solving mysteries turn their attention to hunting across the countryside of Europe for evils older than the countryside itself.  Good buddies killing demons has all the charm of the Winchester brothers on Supernatural without all the brooding daddy issues.  And that’s what Blood Feud #1 opens with: some good ol’ boys by the name of Cecil and R.F. driving a pick-up truck into town jawing on about nothing important.  It’s actually my favorite piece of dialogue right now, and I’ll explain why shortly.

The Stubbs and Whatley clans have been feuding for longer than anybody can recall in this quaint, little, mountain town.  The Stubbs family is known as the mean and rambunctious sort.  The kind of folks that would travel in a group to pick on a lone passerby for laughs.  The Whatleys however, have a much more feared and rumored history.  A history filled with rumors of witchcraft and naked chanting in the night!  And that’s enough to set the stage for our heroes to enter.

Our story opens on an ideal Saturday drive with best buddies R.F. and Cecil.  Cecil is arguing with R.F. that seeing a blue jay is a bad omen on Friday, because Friday is the blue jay’s day to receive his weekly orders from Satan in Hell.  Now go back and read that sentence again.  Meanwhile, R.F.’s truck is driving over thousands upon thousands of migrating tarantulas as they cross the road.  This is by and large the wittiest use of irony I have read in a minute.  In the opening scene, two pals argue over the validity of an omen, or whether it was an omen to begin with, while they drive their truck over the real bad omen.  It isn’t long after that that even weirder things pick up the pace and we learn what’s really gone wrong in this little mountain village.  I’d rather not spoil a thing from there.

But there are gross-looking vampires in it too.  Not “The Strain” gross, but its own kind of Podunk-goofy-possum-faced gross.  I love them.  That is all I’m going to give you.  The rest you’re just going to have to find out yourselves buy reading it!

Cullen Bunn’s snappy wit and Drew Moss’s smooth brushwork have opened a Pandora’s Box of blood-red, redneck, nastiness that I can’t wait to see go off!

-Matthew Burbridge

Read Blood Feud #1 on comiXology.com