Comic Review: Eat the Rich #1 (BOOM! Studios)

The lives of The One Percent make fascinating fodder, food for thought, in Eat The Rich #1, from BOOM! Studios.

Joey is all set to spend her summer with boyfriend Astor, at Crestfall Bluffs. He’s got the looks, the car, the pedigree. But doggone it, there is a lot of tension in the air upon her arrival. She is nervous. Will she fit in, or at least survive the culture shock? It’s a deep look under the hood at the rules of the cognoscenti, the idle gossip columns of the rich, the ways and means, and dirty looks.

Hugo award-winning author Sarah Gailey (The Echo Wife, Magic For Liars) spins a web, any size, and man, do the pages fly by. It’s nasty tricks, overlapping dialogue balloons, divided loyalties. Something rotten this way comes, but the writing is deep and crisp, like four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

Lithuanian artist Pius Bak (Firefly, The Magicians, Stranger Things, etc) tosses us into the wide-open spaces of the near-desert. the figures are well-drawn, the story flows nicely, and the drawing style incorporates light and deep shadow. “How apropo!” Colourist Roman Titov keeps the warms and cools apart, apartheid-mingled with precision, the pinks and oranges and blues to keep the divisions of society and class very classy indeed.

Lettering by Cardinal Rae.

It’s nasty, it’s disturbing in its horror, but it’s impeccably rendered, hung, and quartered. Check it out, you may never leave!

BOOM! Studios, Eat The Rich #1 (of 5), $3.99 for 24 pages, Horror for mature readers.