By Dustin Cabeal

This review is long overdue. I wish I had read this issue a lot sooner because it is just a great conclusion to the first volume of the series. Let’s just say that I don’t regret picking Sink as my best comic of last year, it finishes strong with the fifth issue and manages to highlight all the great things about the series in the process.

Once again, the story finds a character that seems out of place in this world to follow. We’ve followed a party guy, a cleaner, a transgender woman that’s coming to terms with herself and former life, a pack of kids and now a woman that’s lost her dog. If you haven’t read the series you’re probably thinking the cleaner, and the kids make a woman looking for her lost dog fit right in, but the cleaner is that of dead bodies, and the kids are looking to kill clowns. Yeah, suddenly a woman looking for her lost dog feels extremely out of place, and it is, intentionally.

Emma is our women looking for the dog, and she starts by meeting her childhood friend, who has become a Dickhead. Not like, “oh, he’s a dickhead now,” but that he’s part of an actual gang called the Dickheads and they wear condoms on their head. Apparently, 24/7 as the friend reveals to us, which is fucking gross and makes me love these fucking pricks even more. He tells her to try a club but to be careful not to piss the wrong people off. He knows he’s a low-level thug and he’s worried that she’ll end up dead. Instead, she ends up face to face with the Kingpin of the city that’s been mentioned throughout the series. He doesn’t disappoint, not in the least bit. He helps her find her dog, and sure you’re probably thinking, he’s a criminal with a heart of gold, but instead he uses it as a life lesson for all those around him. Specifically when he says, “This is what happens in my world. This is what change costs” I fell in love with the man. Frankly, the other comic Kingpin that everyone wants to love and enjoy isn’t half the badass as the one John Less has written.

Lees writing continues to be on point in this issue, but it shines brighter due to the amazing characters he has to work with. While all the other one-shot characters have been great, there’s something about the chemistry between McKirdie and Emma. Her bravery pairs nicely to his, “I’m not a bad guy until you piss me off” type of attitude. There is a spot at the end that while I know is just common U.K. slang (I’m bunching it all together because I’m an American and I don’t know the complex breakdown of the entire country so deal with that because you know it’s the goddamn same if I start picking out states in the USA!), but I’d like to think that the name of the dog at the end is a tip of the hat to this site, or at least made me like the dog more. Seriously though, this is some career work from Less and why I’m not seeing big publishers chasing him down to save their floundering characters is just beyond me.

Someone who I have seen become the center of attention is artist Alex Cormack. Who continues to refine and develop his style. I like Cormack’s work for sure, but on Sink it feels at home. It feels like it belongs here more than it does anywhere else. It is my great hope that these two creators will continue to pump out amazing one-shot stories in this world because they are quite the duo. On this issue, I loved Emma’s hair. There was so much of it, but it fit her personality and was styled in a way that a real person would style it. I hate hair that looks stuck in another era so whenever I see good hair in comics, I take a moment to point it out. The use of red in this issue was also masterful. Just enough and always at the right time.

While I have no idea how long it’ll take for more issues of Sink, I’m already waiting for more. Especially with what’s teased at the end of this issue. That and the issue of the Clowns is largely unresolved, and I need some goddamn resolution for those freaky fuckers. Anyway, if you’re not reading Sink, you’re just cheating yourself out of one of the best comics published this year and last.

Score: 5/5

Sink #5
John Lees
Alex Cormack
Lisa Moore
Shawn Lee
ComixTribe