Comic Review: Snatched #1 (Scout Comics)

Snatched #1, the first issue of a new Scout title, yanks at your head and doesn’t let go.

Writer Sheldon Allen throws us into rough territory right away. In three separate, parallel storylines, Allen exposes the gnarly, blunt underworld behaviours of organized crime. Drugs, human hair trafficking (!!), racism, brutality. It’s all here in bruises, cuts, and severed dreams. The hustle, the competitive pressures, the dirty deeds from the bad men. The business concept: Forceably shear womens’ hair off for cheap, convert it into hair braids and sell it at an enormous mark up to vain North American women.

Artist Mauricio Campetella draws us into the world of Central America sweatshops, the back rooms of the Mandarin-speaking gangs, the impoverished victims of systematic human bondage and virtual slavery. The illustrations are well executed. Campetella comes in close on his scheming figures, they themselves are aggressive and forthright. Yelling, arguing, negotiating, with expressions ranging from mock outrage to outright fury. Some of the facial features could be more aligned with their racial origins (some of the Asians and East Indians appear ambiguously similar here, for example) but that’s a minor quibble.

Colourist Warnia Sahadewa deserves credit too, for a carefully planned palette. The environmental lighting, where some rooms are lit in fluorescent, some indirect light. The streets, the factories, the institutions. Beautifully coordinated as an overall look.
Lettering is by Matt Bowers.

Unfiltered, crude at times (there are a few spelling mistakes), and alarming in its open aggression, but absolutely compelling in its originality. If you have an interest in provocative crime stories with a true tale to tell, this one is definitely for you!

Scout Comics, Snatched #1, $3.99 for 32 pages of content. Mature