Telling a story without saying anything is probably one of the hardest things to do in comic books and movies. You really have to rely on the characters reactions to be able to understand what they are feeling and what story the story-teller is trying to tell you. I have only seen this been done successfully once in comics with a book I read a while back called Sumo, and that book still had some dialogue to carry the story through. In Drunk Fight there is close to zero dialogue in the story but you get the message of the book. The story starts off with a young guy who gets texted by his buddies to hit the bars and party all night. Only showing the reader different art panels the comic illustrates what the young man does all night; he parties hard and gets wasted until he finally calls it a night. The young man gets into a bus clearly drunk as a skunk and there is another guy there dressed in a skeleton hoodie minding his own business in the bus smoking. The young man still drunk gets annoyed by the hooded guy and tells the guy that it’s rude to smoke in the bus. The hooded man looks at this drunken young man and tells him to shove off.
The young man “confronts” the hooded man in a low voice, but the hooded man wouldn’t have it and he punches him. The hooded man leaves the bus, and drunken young man decides to follow him to confront the hooded man again now with his pride hurt since he got beat up on the bus. He tries to confront the hooded man, but what happens is that the hooded man gives the drunken youngster the beating of his life. The drunken young guy wakes up from his beating and decides to walk home. While walking back home he passes a Chinese restaurant and he sees what he believes is the hooded man who kicked his butt seven ways to Sunday. A lot of feelings flow through the young man especially feelings and ideas of killing this guy for beating him up the way he did. He sees a bicycle lock he picks it up and he thinks to himself when he gets out I will get him. Does he do it? Well that is something I’ll let you figure out for yourself, but the book is pretty amazing.
What really impressed me the most about Drunk Fight was the way that the comic gives you a story but without having a lot of dialogue to carry the comic book. Just by looking at the panels you get the idea of what’s going on and with some good timing in dialogue you get to see what where the young man’s consequences for his drunken behavior.
I loved the art in this book, it is cartoony but with a feel of grit and grime from the city night life. Aside from the main story, the comic book comes with a collection of web comics called Dirty Words which adds some additional separate stories to the comic.
What is even cooler about this comic is that you can pay whatever you want to own it. There is a price of three dollars on the cover, but the idea that you can pay whatever you feel like to own this comic is such an awesome idea. Plus, it’s a great way to get the reader interested in other material that the duo of Jesse Davidge and Andrew Fielden might come up with next. Overall a great one shot that has some excellent storytelling and some great art, plus you pay whatever you like for the comic! I think that’s a really great deal!
Score: 5/5
Writer: Andrew Fielden Artist: Jesse Davidge Publisher: Blatant Studios Price: $3 Print or Pay What You Want - Digital Website