Welcome to Bloodhound: Brass Knuckle Psychology. You’re in for a treat.
Let me say up front that I don’t have a thing to do with Bloodhound. I didn’t have any part in putting it together, don’t really know Dan or Leonard all that well (aside from some online interaction here and there), and I don’t think I’d so much as spoken to either of them at the time Bloodhound debuted. I came to it, as others did—too few others, but that’s another story—purely as a reader, picking up something in the stack of new comics out that week. No preconceptions, no expectations.
And wow. These days, when it often takes a few issues for a series to find its groove, when a reader’s got to give something a little time to grow on them, Bloodhound just came slamming out of the gate full speed, slowing down for nothing and nobody. It felt fully formed from page one, crackling with momentum and energy and a tough, lean sense of confidence in its storytelling. Travis Clevenger didn’t say much, but he didn’t need to. He dominated any scene he was in. And not just because he was huge.
There’s a magic to it, an alchemy of collaboration. A script can be great, it can be combined with terrific art and still fall flat, because the two don’t fit. They pull in different directions, creating disharmony. They can even fit well together, but just not have that spark that brings the finished pages to life. But on Bloodhound, that wasn’t an issue. The words and pictures didn’t just work well together; they practically vibrated, they were so in tune. It’s a simple idea—delivered with great skill and nuance, but simple at its core—a tough, take-no-prisoners profiler who brings down superhuman criminals—but Dan and Leonard delivered it so well it was like a baseball bat right to the forehead. What was that? Where did this come from? Who are these guys?!
Sometimes it works like that. The right combination happens, on the right project, and bam! Magic happens.
And boy, did it happen here.
I can’t say I was really aware of Dan—I knew his name, and I knew he’d done some comics here and there for a little while (about ten years, as it turns out), but he wasn’t really on my radar. And Leonard—I knew and liked Leonard’s work, from Supergirl, JSA, and other books. He was a solid comics artist who you could always count on to do a good, effective job.
But this? This was a quantum leap forward for both of them. All of a sudden, it was “Wait, wait, who’s this Dan Jolley guy? How’d he get to be so good when I wasn’t looking?” and “Now hold on a minute. I know Leonard Kirk’s work. It’s good, yes, but holy cow, this is superb! What happened?!”
Except that’s not what I was thinking right off. Because while I was reading the stories, I was caught up in the world, caught up in the narrative, and it was all one thing—I wasn’t watching Dan write or Leonard draw; I was watching Travis Clevenger and Saffron Bell do their thing, and even for someone who’d been seeing comics as lines on paper for more than twenty years at that point, the magic was working. It was coming alive in a way you can only hope for when you’re making the comics, and it was doing it issue after issue, with no slackening off in power, wit, or impact. Clevenger had mass in the art (hoo boy, did he ever), he had depth in the script, and he just. Never. Backed. Down.
Comics specialize in big, muscly guys. They even specialize in smart guys. But Travis Clevenger felt like something new, like something we hadn’t seen before. Someone who belonged, not merely with the great comics heroes, but with the great crime heroes, those tarnished noir knights that walk the mean streets, battered and bruised, but never quite succumbing to that meanness. And Leonard Kirk’s art showed you that, with every line, every crooked expression, every rough-hewn scar.
Dan was giving us a superhero/crime fusion we’d never seen before, and Leonard was knocking it out of the park, every issue. It was a great book.
It was DC’s best book, only no one was reading it.
Sometimes it happens like that too.
(And before I go on, hats off to editor Ivan Cohen, for bringing Dan and Leonard together, and assembling the rest of the team—Robin Riggs, Moose Baumann, Rob Leigh, Dave Johnson. Everything on this book worked, from the crime scene–tape logo to the choice of font and balloon styles. It was a really, really well put-together book.
(And hats off, too, to Drew Johnson, for his part in cocreating the book, which I’ve never known anything about, but whatever he did, it worked.)
The thing is, it’s very, very hard to get people to pay attention to a book like Bloodhound, set in the middle of a big, sprawling superhero universe. On its own, it’s a wonderful paranormal noir series, full of action and drama and character insight and suspense, but the minute it’s presented as part of a big shared universe, it’s not on its own anymore. It’s not even in the spotlight. It’s like there’s this big crowded stage full of circus acts and fireworks and space battles and more, and off in the corner there’s this really cool thing happening, but the audience knows it’s not “important.” After all, if it were important, Superman would be in it.
So Bloodhound didn’t last. And now here it is again, free of the DC universe, where it can stand on its own. Where Travis Clevenger can be the center of his own dramatic universe, and have a stage and spotlight to himself. As he deserves to.
And I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Well, actually, I could be. Because there could be a Bloodhound TV series, or a movie. There could be a computer game. Heck, better than that, there could be more Bloodhound comics. New adventures, digging deeper into Clevenger, into his partners’ lives, into the forces arrayed against them, into the mistakes of the past and the threats of the future. Clevenger could keep pissing people off, whether it’s with a mop handle to the face or a timely piece of startling character analysis. Dangerous monsters could be on the loose, with only a small, outmatched group standing against them, their position under attack from the authorities as well as from the bad guys.
We could have more.
But hey, one thing at a time.
Welcome to Bloodhound: Brass Knuckle Psychology. You’re in for a treat.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
January 2013
Kurt Busiek is an Eisner and Harvey Award–winning writer and is among comics’ most respected voices. He is best known for his work on such series as Marvels, Astro City, Conan, The Avengers, Superman, and Thunderbolts.