Ding dong, the beast is dead, but there is still a lot of bloodshed, shredded clothing, and sleds of sentiment in the new issue of The Rush, #5, from Vault Comics.
Writer Si Spurrier tells the grizzly-filled tale of the northern landscape, the slim pickings of the Yukon gold rush back in the day. The day is long, but the nights are longer. Meanwhile, Nettie Bridger is taking a chance, revealing her feelings to someone close by. It’s bound to get complicated. And Spurrier fills the supernatural cavern of the script with an astonishingly good ‘ear’ for period dialogue. We feel the awkwardness of the miners and the other minor characters, struggling to express themselves, to better themselves, to help themselves to anything around. To find a stake to claim. The meager surroundings, the difficult terrain, the constant paranoia of ‘who is less evil than the next guy’.
Artist Nathan Gooden (colourist is Addison Duke, lettering Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou) deals in shapes, mass, choreography of movement. The viewpoint of the reader switches in for a textured closeup, then back to establish the surroundings. The wardrobes of the past, the snowy hills, the spruces and pines of the wilderness, boughing and bending to the artist’s will, so effortlessly.
It’s literature for the mind’s eye, the days gone by, supernaturally haunted with violence, accompanied by a ragtag bunch of miners who keep tripping themselves up. Brilliant.
Vault Comics, The Rush #5, $3.99 for 32 pages of content.
Newsdesk