REVIEW: The Tenth #1

Creator & Artist: Tony Daniel

Developer & Writer: Beau Smith

Inker: Kevin Conrad

Colors: Paul Mounts & Bongotone

Cover: Tony Daniel & Marlo Alquiza

Review: Art Bee

Please forgive us at The HCB; we have all had life issues that seemed to coincide and the best option was to take a bit of a vacation from writing reviews. Thank you all for your patience! You are all Rock Stars and we love ya!

Trying to figure out what to review from my boxes of comics was a bit hard, but The Tenth #1 jumped out at me. Thinking I had already reviewed it or another of the series, I searched the sites and found that I hadn’t. I then began kicking myself in the ass for not doing so before now. This series has a special place in my heart and I wish more had been done with the storyline and/or characters.

Warning! I will be spoiling this issue but the way the comic is done it won’t change your enjoyment. I have read this several times and each time the issue excites me.

Besides, some of the sweet details I will leave for you to discover.

The issue opens up with the escape of The Tenth from a secret facility of Darkklon Corp., which is owned, run, and founded by a creepy man, Rhazes Darkk.

The Tenth is the tenth experimental creature created by Darkk in efforts to transform the world into his twisted, unrealized utopia.

 

After a few pages of the chase we are whisked away to nearby Springdale, Colorado, a community founded by Darkk for patients and staff of Darkklon Corp. Here we are introduced to Esperanza and her best friend, Zorina Fine.

Trust me! Her last name fits…perfectly.

The pair is trying to figure out the evening inside due to the 7pm curfew imposed by The Tenth’s escape.  Zorina finds out her mother, Dr. Jaena Fine, has been beeping her with an emergency code for hours. The girls panic and hightail it for Dr. Fine’s office.

With the young ladies in motion and the search party actively pursuing The Tenth, can you guess what happens next?

Yes, the car Espy and Zorina are driving collides with none other than The Tenth.

What I have just covered is only the backbone of the plot. There is a LOT that happens along this storyline in just this issue.

With most comic books I have read, the first issue may present one main antagonist (which could be a group i.e. The Hand) or two with one acting as a, “behind the scenes” type.

This first issue actually presents three active baddies with Darkk being the head guy behind it all.

Yeah! Sack up, Tenth!

The first presented is called Killkrow, who is Darkk’s third creation. This guy speaks like he is a snake and controls a wicked flock of somewhat demonic crows.

The second evil creature is a very sexily drawn woman called Bahareh. We aren’t presented with much information about her yet, but we are told she is Darkk’s most trusted associate and has a very sadistic streak in her.

The third baddie is named Blackspell and reminds me of a demonic looking Slash from Guns’n’Roses (hat and hair).

At the very end of the issue, aside from finding out some key and juicy intel (not sharing it though), we find out that Esperanza has some kind of strange power and that she and The Tenth share a connection of some kind.

So I guess the collision was more than an accident…

The writing and sculpting of this story is quite the masterpiece. Having read the entire series a few times before, I can assure you that the pace from the first issue is continued until the end.

The story and artwork are intertwined in such a manner to build a pace and tone for which the reader is to be immersed. For instance, on page three, most of the page is one large image with the top of the broken up into monstrous teeth containing fragmented scenes of escape and things breaking while the bulk of the scene shows a room in disarray. These images are bordered with blood spatter. Meanwhile one white-bordered small panel in the lower right shows a guy trying to figure out what he is hearing.

Pages like this are so instrumental on so many levels for the creators to use to communicate to the reader and there are many more examples throughout the issue.

With that said we need to comment on the supercharged artistic quality, which is mind-blowingly superior to most of what I have seen in my life. These guys have a level of detail in their work that you just will not find elsewhere. They were of a time before digital enhancing artistic software.

Pencils, ink, and markers, Oh My!

Needless to say, this comic book series is a highly recommended story. If you are able to get any of the series, you won’t be sorry. There are a few miniseries that came after the main series, but I have only read one of them (it was decent).

These series are contained with other comic books on which I have a highly prized notation. There is one particular issue in the series that I am bound to review soon, since it is one of my single most favored issues.

When should I do that?

Stay tuned…