Grim Leaper #2 - Review

Grim Leaper #2 is a hard book to review. A book this good makes me want to tell you all about what happened and why it's so awesome, but I can't do that because I'd be spoiling it all for you. So I'm going to give this a shot, but just know that it's going to be difficult for me.

Okay, well, holy crap.

Grim Leaper, an Image comic from Kurtis J. Wiebe and Aluísio C. Santos, follows two lovers - Lou and Ella - with a curse: They die very frequently, and when they do, they reincarnate as someone else in the same town. The first issue was excellent, fully exceeding my expectations, delivering a read that was so near-perfect that I was apprehensive about whether or not the next issue would keep up the high quality. This issue starts out with a curve ball that entirely extinguished such fears.

The book starts with this great reveal, leaving me shocked and disturbed, smiling and shaking my comic book in excitement, and ended leaving a similar impression on me.

Once this intro is over, we get into the main plot of this issue, which centers around Lou, for the first time, being dropped into the body of a man with a partner. This makes Lou contemplate the ugliness of his curse; a curse that he had seen as a bit of a blessing beforehand. It bothers Lou that he's probably going to die very soon as this man, without having said goodbye to the wife. This provides interesting and dramatic commentary to coincide with Grim Leaper's normal approach of comedic ridiculousness that is seen in the beginning of this issue.

Which returns at the end of the book, when Lou meets back up with Ella for familiar laughs and familiar displays of the strange cuteness of their relationship. The ultra-gory and violent ending leading into #3 is a good display of the stellar art Santos is doing. The strange color palletes, quirky character designs, and blood that practically falls off the page continues to impress.

I have a few complaints, though they may simply be holes that Kurtis intends to patch up in later issues. I don't understand how Lou manages to find the home of the person he reincarnates as, and similarly, I don't understand how Ella found Lou's current body. Blatant missteps in such a good series makes me think that I'll get answers later on, but at the moment, it's still jarring.

Grim Leaper is the real deal. It's a comic book that isn't from the two big publishers, isn't even about capes and cowls, and it's very enjoyable.

***

At the end of the book is a back-up from writer Ryan K Lindsay and artist Daniel J Logan titled "Love Sick." Like the actual story I purchased these pieces of paper for, it's hard to review this without spoiling things. This five-page story tells the tale of a man cheated on by a love that was meant to last forever, but instead left him very fat by the woman's cooking - a skill of her's that she took great pride in. It ends with a bizarre and morbid ending that initially caused me to be confused as to how I should feel, but I indulged in laughter and it felt right.