Border Town #2 Review

Writer: Eric M. Esquivel / Artist: Ramon Villalobos / DC Comics BEHIND LA MASCARA The second issue of Vertigo’s newest highly-acclaimed series begins in the past – specifically, that of the luchador-masked Quinteh. Young(er) Quinteh is bare-faced, and afraid of going to school. To give him courage, his mother tells him of their Kiowa ancestors, who “…would dance to push their own souls aside, and make room inside their hearts for spirits who didn’t know fear”. She and Quinteh go to his room, a shrine of fandom to the wrestler ‘El Diablo Verde’ topped with a very familiar mask. While Quinteh re-lives his own superhero origin story, however, his present-day companions want nothing to do with heroics of any sort. WHERE THEY FROM Despite having come into contact with something undoubtedly otherworldly, Julietta and Aimi convince Frank that discussing the events they just escaped would buy the teens nothing but trouble. Even Blake, the bully, retreats home quietly. The skinhead that troubled Frank hides his wounds (which look curiously infected…) while quietly acknowledging his father’s poisonous rhetoric. The one character in plenty of trouble is the shape-shifting chupacabra the kids dealt with. Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Dead, has sent a host of the chupacabra’s nightmare kin to hunt the critter down for violating the border between their world and ours – an act that could have reality-destabilizing consequences for both dimensions. When the sharp-toothed shapeshifter jum…