“Killadelphia” is an interesting first issue, both in terms of the comic itself, but mainly on the choices used to construct it. With a very unusual approach to art, lettering, and pacing, “Killadelphia” deserves close scrutiny.
Written by Rodney BarnesCover by Jason Shawn Alexander
Illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander
Colored by Luis Nct
Lettered by Marshall Dillon“SINS OF THE FATHER,” Part One Featuring the show-stopping talents of SPAWN series artist JASON SHAWN ALEXANDER and the writer behind such hit shows as Wutang: An American Saga, Marvel’s Runaways, and Starz’s American Gods—RODNEY BARNES. When a small-town beat cop comes home to bury his murdered father—the revered Philadelphia detective James Sangster Sr.—he begins to unravel a mystery that leads him down a path of horrors that will shake his beliefs to their core. The city that was once the symbol of liberty and freedom has fallen prey to corruption, poverty, unemployment, brutality… and vampires. Welcome to KILLADELPHIA.
Let’s assume for once that a reader approaching “Killadelphia” #1 will not have read any promotional material, or even the solicit about the issue. Assume this audience comes in cold into the issue itself, with no sense of anticipation or clarity on what is it about.
This is an important clarification, as the script by Barnes is surely deliberate on how it wants to hold back certain aspects of the plot, character backgrounds, and general themes that “Killadelphia” will explore. For a debut issue, it keeps its cards very close to the vest, to the point that even halfway through it, readers might be unsure of what this story will actually be about. While surely a bold choice, and one that leaves invested readers glued to the page, it pushes its welcome a bit. It does take long to have better visibility on what the story is about, to the point of confusion.
Before going further into the plot, Alexander’s art is mesmerising. It takes a quasi-realistic approach, but adds to it very unusual page and panel designs, especially on the angles that certain scenes are played out. There is an automatic sense of dread, the atmosphere is dense, and this can be linked to how out-of-place some figures and situations are. It takes a lot of effort to make something look realistic and strange at the same time, but Alexander pulls it off.
What does suffer a bit on “Killadelphia” is the sense of movement of characters, especially on the more action oriented pieces. That realism that works so well to set the stage, holds the illustrations a bit back when narrative flow is concerned. The use of some movement lines on some pages and panel make it better, but this issue can often look more like a collection of photographs (beautiful photographs, mind you), but still a bit stiff for a comic book medium.
Colours by Nct could often be mistaken by a situation when the illustrator is pulling double duties on drawings and colors. It is an issue where the collaboration was clearly established early on, from the ground up, with the palette being very aligned with the mood the illustrations are going for, from haunting hallways, to eerie office spaces.
There is also an interesting offering by letterer Marshall Dillon, part inspiring, part confusing. The positive aspect is on how Dillon uses sound effects to further augment the terror aspects of the book: those sound effects seem to fall down through the panels, dripping or bleeding in. On the negative side, there is quite a bit of reading happening within the story of “Killadelphia” (through newspapers, diaries, journals), but the font choices for some of those aren’t always clear, requiring readers to squint just too much to make sense of it all. Add to it that it is not on just a few pages, and it can be quite distracting.
Back to Barnes’s script, it is part reliving a past traumatic event, part investigative work, which comes together better than it loses its way. It exaggerates in parts (the aforementioned excessive in-story reading, for instance), and the pacing takes too long to show what it has come to bring forth, but it eventually reaches a crescendo that pays off. The lead character is a compelling one, and one that readers can surely get behind of, given his drive, his sad and complex back story, and the challenge at hand. Plus, “Killadelphia” has such a strong final page reveal, that readers will be inclined to forgive some of the issues’s shortcoming.
All in all, “Killadelphia” #1 comes across as a beautiful book, even if a bit static, with a compelling plot and characters, that could have been paced better, especially for a new property on its first issue. Despite of those faults, the rhythm of the final pages pick up so effectively that the issue should drawn its audience back for its sophomore entry.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – Despite some shortcoming, “Killadelphia” is as interesting as it is beautiful and deserves another chance given that great last page.
