By Dustin Cabeal

While I do not foresee reviewing or even reading too many single issues, this one caught my attention because it was from Si Spurrier. I am not so delusional to say he can “do no wrong,” but he is a writer I am always willing to check out. His focus on story and how the reader digests a comic is a rarity in this current age of comics that seek commercial success in other mediums. Spurrier is also never afraid to let the art tell the story more than his written words.

Such is the case with Step by Bloody Step, as the only dialogue in the book is written in indecipherable symbols. For all intents and purposes this is a “silent comic” which I am sure has a better name than that, but I don’t know it, care to look it up or want to change my labelling at this point.

The story starts off with a child in the palms of a metal giant. The child is small enough to fit the steel looking giants’ hand, which must be incredibly cold given the fact that they are in a snow-covered terrain. We see the giant and the girl journey through the frozen wasteland while the giant kills some mutated looking wolves and makes warm clothes for the little girl to wear. The little girl is obedient and always sits and waits for the giant while it fights, but this time she wants to touch a flower that is growing from a tree in the snow. The giant gives in and plucks the flower for her after initially denying her. Eventually, they find civilization. Has the giant fulfilled its task of delivering the child to humans? That will have to wait because another monster needs its head removed from its body by the giant. After defeating the monster, the giant denies contact with the little girl. It will not let her eat any of their food or even take a toy from another child. It is a strange moment in the sense that we really do not know why this is happening especially after the giant uses a drop of the girl’s blood to regrow their destroyed crop.

For a story without a single word of dialogue or narration there is a well-crafted mystery being developed in Step by Bloody Step. There is obviously more to the double-sized first issue than what I have covered, but that is better saved for someone reading the story. Spurrier’s guidance has created a story that some could easily label as a Lone Wolf and Cub knockoff, but it really is only like Lone Wolf in some basic elements.

The standout for the issue is Matias Bergara’s artwork and Matheus Lopes’ coloring. The duo creates a beautiful world for our characters to slowly walkthrough. The action is not the star of the comic, which is intentional. Seeing the girl sitting or going after a flower while a huge battle rages on, seems commonplace for her. Meanwhile, the scene in which the giant keeps the girl away from the villagers is intense and full of raw emotion. The girl’s anger towards the giant is rendered beautifully on the page. There is one element of the art that I cannot speak of due to the spoiler nature of the story, but I wondered if it was intentional design or just myself reading into the art style too much. Time will tell I suppose. Bergara and Matheus create an amazing and fresh sci-fi world. It is not full of beautiful people and high-tech machines, but feels like magic and technology had a medieval baby.

To be quite honest, I have burnt out on single issues in comics. I will save my soapbox thoughts on floppies, but it has been four years since I read and enjoyed a single issue of a comic. Perhaps it is the fact that Spurrier still comes across as one of the few writers looking to write a comic and not a movie. The attention to how the comic flows is skilled, enjoyable, and slowly sinks its hooks into you with every page.

Step by Bloody Step#1
Image Comics
Si Spurrier
Matias Bergara
Matheus Lopes
Emma Price