Loose Ends #1 Review

Writer: Jason Latour / Artist: Chris Brunner / Image Comics Jason Latour’s 4-part Loose Ends is a series a decade in the making, started on 2006 by Latour – “pinned under the weight of all the things I was told comics couldn’t be,” as explained by the writer at the end of its first issue – in Charlotte, North Carolina. It actually premiered originally in 2011 by 12 Gauge Comics, now finding its home (and wider distribution) under Image, as a series that feels much like Jason Aaron and Latour’s Southern Bastards in tone, art, and violence. The story follows Sonny, a war veteran turned drug dealer, at a trashy dive bar and slowly unfolds, suspenseful, until the ax falls and leaves Sonny on the run with a local woman after a violent encounter. Initially it almost seems as if the story is wasting time at the bar, elongating scenes of assholes and intoxication in a series that has precious little time to waste, but it serves the scene well, setting up the pieces and startling you once, and then again, shifting the narrative into full speed. In between the bar scenes are a few flashbacks that help set the foundation of his history and trading heroin, giving Loose Ends a little more depth than what could be offered in the context of Sonny visiting an old flame at the roadside bar.

Loose Ends’ artwork is an example of exceptional pacing when few words are needed or used. Though there are definitely scenes spattered with word balloons it’s not a dialogue-heavy comic for the most part…