North Bend #4 picks up where #3 leaves off, and never looks back. It’s from Scout Comics and a great read.
Without exposing too much of the general plot or proceedings, North Bend is about the CIA, and a mind-bending drug. Take the drug and you become highly susceptible to suggestion: a pushover.
When push comes to shove in North Bend, it’s all about drugs, surveillance, paranoia: real and imagined. And who has the stash, and who is chained to the wall?
Creator Ryan Ellsworth writes his way through the wandering states of consciousness in this gripping tale of suspense and perceptions: things are usually not quite what they seem.
Artist Pablo De Bonis plays it straight, illuminating the gestures and secrets, revealing them in panels of deceptively calm surroundings. The figures struggle, they fight, they express, but there is a careful matter-of-factness at play here. It’s heavy-hitting visual drama, but not full of POWS and ZAPS, more reminding me of the quiet renderings of a Russ Heath, where we are simply presented with ambiguous scenarios, and we must decode them ourselves.
Colourist Paul Little keeps it subdued too, the darkness, the pools of light and dark, the subtle shades of sadism, all atmospheric as heck. It’s a heck of a comic, and I hope you’ll support it.
Scout Comics, North Bend #4, $3.99 for 30 pages, Assume Mature rating
Newsdesk