Comic Review: Narcos #1 (IDW Publishing)

Narcos #1, from IDW, is about cartels.

Things start up for us in 1991, in Medellin, Columbia. A car bomb. Then, an American effort in Bogota, to combat the drug lords. But it all goes wrong, of course. The cartels have their hands and minds in every corner. And drug lord El Patron’s stay in jail is more luxury than punishment.

Ryan Ferrier writes about the humid, tense war on drugs in South America. The deaths, the retributions, the corruption. It’s bureaucracy, with hands somewhat tied behind their backs, against the cartels, on the attack.

Artwork is ably handled by Vic Malhotra, who along with colourist Cris Peter, conveys the tension. The panels are sequential and restrained. The colours are South American, the action scenes brutal.

It’s not ultra-realism in the art, but sobering realism in the text. There’s a lot of dialogue in Narcos, setting the scene, sewing the roots. If you have half a mind for a ‘quite true’ thriller about coke, this would be the one for you!

IDW Narcos #1, $3.99 for 22 pages of content. Mature