Like a Southern Gothic tale sprinkled with blood and double dipped in freshly opened guts, new Redneck comic series (Image) opens on a desolate porch of an isolated farm where an old man - sporting long, old fashioned Walrus-like mustache - is having his thoughts heard by his young niece. As he drinks a bottle of cow's blood, his self-reflection and solitude are broken up by the girl's inquisitiveness, who warns him, "Don't go into town. You're too drunk."
Thus begins writer Donny Cates and artists Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cunniffe's darkly comical tale about old school vampires living in a modern world in a rural Texas setting that hasn't perhaps progressed as much as it should have. The aforementioned old man, who goes by the name of Bartlett Bowman, is a skinny, loose shirt-wearing old timer who resembles Mark Twain on crack, and when his nephews get into a deadly feud with the rivaling Landry family, lives will be lost, bodies lynched, and old hatred reawakened.
The illustrations are not as sharp and clear as the recently released Plastic series, but that perhaps is the style that Estherren and Cunniffe are going after. Their close-ups of sharp, fang-like teeth and spooky, open country nights illuminated by haunting moonlight certainly leave an impression on the reader's psyche. Cates' characters, those white trash vampires of movies and TV shows of old, come across as hybrids of Near Dark-meets-True Blood archetypes. The only difference is that his protagonists are older and perhaps not as chic as what we're used to seeing in this genre.
Redneck #1 is a worthy intro into a vampire saga that, although somewhat familiar around the edges, still presents us with combatants who possess unique traits not entirely seen before. If Bartlett's plight in the closing pages is any indication of the dilemma that Bowmans are about to face, this series is about to get a whole lot bloodier.
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