By Dustin Cabeal
When I see Steve Orlando’s name and a Russian theme I’m never terribly surprised. I did an interview with Orlando a few years back during his first Image title and remembered discussing how he’d found his artist and that he had real-world experience working in Russia (in 2018 I’m sure some people just gasped, but four years ago not so much). In that regard, I wasn’t surprised by the setting for Crude.
The first thing to note is that even though there’s labeling for the timeline, the story jumps around a bit too much at the beginning which can be confusing. One of the characters has a relationship with a couple, and they look like younger versions of his parents. The gist is that I didn’t know if that was the kid grown up or someone else with the same name. It was confusing and forced me to re-read the entire opening or at the very least the captions. Unfortunately, the captions didn’t strike me as that important nor did they stand out from the page.
After I clarified what was happening, I disliked the opening more. Mostly because it was unnecessarily muddled. It was a cinematic approach, but comics don’t move like movies when you read them. The general idea is that we’re introduced to a father lying to his son about his line of work, which is killing people for the government. He has a nickname, so you know he’s fucking dangerous. Eventually, we get to the present where his son has grown up to be bi-sexual and share a relationship with two other people. He decides to leave his town and go to a place called Blackstone to live free. The city/camp comes across as different things in the story which is likely to play into the story more. Is it a place where you can live openly and freely as yourself or is it a slave labor camp that can make you rich?
The big plot point would be a bit of a spoiler, even if it seemed extremely obvious while reading the story. There were a couple of key lines of dialogue that foreshadowed the event. It presents an interesting path for the story. Outside of the final sequence though, the rest is just a lot of setup and slight character development.
The action sequence that’s in the story is decent. Not great as it could have used more room to move and flow. That and it felt like the same old James Bondish action sequence that’s been done a hundred times before. If he didn’t have a cool nickname and weren’t set in Russia, I wouldn’t believe this guy was a bad ass for a second.
The art didn’t help with the confusion that I mentioned. There are some aspects that I could have picked up on more, but again with all the flip-flopping in the attempt at showing a cinematic flashback, I was just lost. The art isn’t bad, but there are more than a few panels that look empty or have a severe lack of detail to the character’s faces. The flashback/jarring memory scenes are definitely the weakest aspect of the art and part of it comes from the coloring. By simply adding more contrast between the past and present it would have visually indicated different timelines. This is something other publishers have mastered, and a little mimicry would have helped the story.
The art doesn’t hide the stories weakness and vice versa. It’s a solid first issue that lays the groundwork for a story of revenge. Depending on what Orlando does with the plot there could be a deeper story of a father finally learning and connecting with his son, but we’ll have to wait and see. At least for another issue.
Score: 3/5
Crude #1
Image Comics