By Dustin Cabeal

Sometimes when a creator has a high concept, they focus too much on the concept and leave their characters severely lacking. That seems to be the case with Deal Breaker a story that has a main character that is forgettable, but also not very believable given their setting.

The gist of the story is easy to sum up, a man makes a wish with a coin in the fountain and gets a better life. Suddenly he’s not at a dead-end job being a security guard at a high school working with a pedophile. He has a successful career, a beautiful wife and two kids. He receives a random message saying it’s time to pay his debt which he promptly ignores because who answers messages from unknown callers? The next day his family disappears from existence one after the other until we arrive at the stereotypical scene of the husband filing a missing person’s report for his three missing family members.

Listen, I know that it’s a typical trope of movies and TV shows to say that you need to wait 24 hours to file a missing person report, but that’s not true. They’ll take the report, they may not react to the report if they feel the person isn’t in danger, but I’m pretty sure that a man showing up saying that his entire family has been abducted would light a fire under the police and it would be gross negligence for them to turn him away. What’s worse is that they tell him to wait 48 hours which seems to match up with the timeline of the story and nothing else. It’s a tired, bad trope that doesn’t hold any logic in the world anymore. It’s been done to death so if you’re a writer out there… don’t do it. Don’t use it, write your story better than that because the second I hit this page I checked out of the story. I had zero interest in finishing it. If you’re going to throw in real world elements like this on your fantasy story, make them at least realistic. Obviously, I finished the issue for the review, but if I was reading this recreationally then I absolutely would have put it down unfinished.

The husband leaves the police station and receives a phone call. The voice on the other end tells him to keep walking and not involve the police. He tells him to walk, and he’ll demonstrate his power. Suddenly a man falls from the sky and lands in front of the husband. This is enough to convince the husband who heads to the docks to meet the man that granted his wish and is now calling for the debt to be paid… by having him kill another man that didn’t pay his debt.

Let me get this straight… he can make a man throw himself off a building to their death, but he’s worried about the cops. Okay, problem number one right there. The second problem, why the fuck would the husband feel like he must go through with this given the guy he’s after is also a “deal breaker” and the deal maker can’t touch him? I would just give him the finger and tell him to do it himself, mostly because I didn’t sign a contract or agree to the terms and conditions. Why they hell does he owe him anything, which is the third problem. If anything, this deal maker has demonstrated his lack of power and control with this situation. The fourth problem I have is why would he trust some guy that’s lived a soft perfect life to suddenly become a cold-blooded killer? Especially, when the story has done nothing to show how desperate he is to get his life back.

A suggestion, maybe have the husband and family get into a minor fender bender and the husband goes off on the guy that hit them telling them that if anything happens to his family, he won’t need a lawyer he’ll need an undertaker. Something that shows that he’s serious about his family and lifestyle to the point that he loses sight of checking on his family. He just cares that they’re there. The contract that doesn’t exist bothers me further, just have them sign a contract so at least he’s aware. Cut out all the fat, have the family disappear and the deal maker just shows up with the target and the contract and then forgettable husband grabs his gun that he’s used at the gun range every weekend preparing for this moment. I’m not writing the story, and these are just things I’m spouting off while writing the review, but the concept isn’t strong enough to be interesting. It’s just the “deal with the devil” storyline paired with a forgettable husband character.

The artwork and coloring are okay. The characters lack a lot of facial details and forgettable husband is very forgettable because of this. He’s too generic looking and doesn’t emote with the exception of when a dude splatters on the ground in front of him and even then, it’s more like a “hey, who pulled on my headphone cord” type of look rather than “dear god, I’m going to puke my guts out now having seen this.” The coloring is all muted. It’s lacking a lot in the coloring department. It reminds me a lot of another publisher who pumped out a ton of books that all had this same color set. It lacks in detail; it hurts the atmosphere and overall, it doesn’t give a consistent look to the book.

I don’t like dumping on small indie books like this, but if you’re going to take the time and money to make a book and send it out for review, you’re going to get honest and sometimes harsh feedback. I’m not a friend, I’m not a family member, I’m not a close colleague and so I will not pull my punches. That said, I wouldn’t read anymore of this series. There is nothing unique or interesting about the story that I haven’t seen done a dozen times over. The art is forgettable, which makes the characters forgettable as well. You can see the love and the desire to tell a good story, but again, it’s like the creators were lost in the concept and forget to check the rest of the story for problems.

Story by Marcel Dupree and Joshua Metzger
Art by Jonas Scharf
Colors by Marco Pagnotta
Letters by Brant Fowler

Score: 2/5