By Damien Becton

Cullen Bunn is another one of those long-tenured, swiss army knife comic book writers who has had extensive runs with just about all of the big name comic book companies. This is for good reason - Bunn is one of the most consistent and reliable writers in the industry. When a Cullen Bunn book comes out, you can bet that you’re going to get an entertaining story. With Bone Parish #1, these statements still hold true. This is an incredibly engaging kick-off to the story and I cannot wait for more.

Bone Parish #1 establishes the groundwork and introduces the premise for the story that Cullen Bunn and Boom! Studios are going to tell. In a nutshell, the book is about a family business that produces and distributes a unique drug that is not available anywhere else. The drug is made of human corpses, but that isn’t the only thing. The people who use the drugs don’t just trip, they experience the things from the corpses’ past, actually live them. And it is because of this that the family targets corpses of dead celebrities and leaders and other important people. Obviously, this brings a lot of attention to the family business like competitors and businessmen.

Bunn does an incredible job in this first issue establishing and introducing the characters, their initial motivations, and their personalities. You get a great sense of who these family members are as well as how they interact with each other. Additionally, Bunn effectively displays how the drugs affect the users, incorporating the lyrics to a song to convey what they are feeling in specific panels. He also is able to utilize a pretty awesome cliffhanger and twist that I did not see coming at all.

The art by Jonas Scharf is also incredibly well done. For whatever reason, I received Marco Chechetto vibe from the pencils, although I’m fairly certain there is a better comparison out there somewhere. I think the highlights of the arts are the panels that show the user tripping off of the drugs that the family produces. The way that Scharf is able to weave back and forth from their hallucinations to the real world are seamless, and the looks on one users’ face is haunting in particular.

Overall, this book is an incredible way to kickstart this story. Cullen Bunn is able to effectively introduce and establish the characters as well as the effects of the drug. The art is just as engaging as the Jonas Scharf and Cullen Bunn are able to work masterfully with each other to tell an incredibly engrossing first entry to this story. After this first issue, I have all the confidence in the world in this book and this creative team.

Score: 5/5

Bone Parish #1
BOOM! Studios