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Dead Letters Vol. 1
Sam Whistler wakes up in an unfamiliar motel room, dressed in hospital scrubs and his arms wrapped in bandages. He remembers nothing-not how he got here, not where here is...not even his own name. But the goons knocking down his door sure do, and it's going to take every single move in Sam's forgotten repertoire to outrun and outsmart the gang war he's just stumbled into.
112 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2014
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76 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
January 24, 2017
Some Guy appears in a generic city. He can’t remember who he is or anything. Then some guys show up and try to get him to work for them. Some other guys show up and try to get him to work for them. What work? Like guns and junk. He’s a hitman? He works for both but he’s really working for himself. The guys are God and The Devil. He is in Purgatory.
This book is beyond boring. I was thinking of literally anything while reading this and, when I paid attention to it, I immediately forgot what I’d just read. Or maybe that was my brain rejecting it as too crap even to retain vaguely as memory. Good job, brain. Just for that I’ll take it easier on the beer from now on.
Dead Letters is like throwing wet bread at a coconut shy and hoping to somehow win a balloon. That simile doesn’t make sense but neither does Dead Letters. Ok, let’s power through this, guys - stay with me!
Purgatory is entirely constructed out of peoples’ perceptions of it meaning it could look like anything but instead it looks and is just another grimy city, like say New York. Why? People are unimaginative I guess, or maybe the creative team are telling us that they think people as a whole tend to fall back on what they know rather than do anything different?
It’s uninspiring and uninteresting to look at - the artist’s name is Chris Visions which is ironic because he clearly has none. His “vision” of a potentially unique take on the afterlife is to replicate what already exists on Earth. And it looks like shit.
It also turns out you can get gored and hurt with guns and celestial knives. Why do they exist in the afterlife? Who knows? Exactly why God and the Devil’s forces are so intent on getting Some Guy to work for them is also a mystery - he’s just Some Guy. These forces are also incredibly stupid. Some Guy is able to convince each one that he’s working for them every time they catch up with him.
God’s Forces: It’s Some Guy - hey, we’re gonna beatchoo!
Some Guy: No, look I’m really working for youse swell fellas.
God’s Forces: Duh, yeah that makes sense. See you later!
Some Guy: Idiots…
Devil’s Forces: It’s Some Guy - get him!
Some Guy: No, I’m on your side, see?
Devil’s Forces: That checks out. You’re the best, Some Guy!
Some Guy (turns to reader): Are you really still reading this drek? You know Batman comics exist, right?
The plot is just one big convoluted mess with Some Guy double-crossing one side over the other while he looks for Some Girl and Some Answers that you couldn’t possibly care about because you don’t know what’s happening. Christopher Sebela (who’s worked on Kelly Sue DeConnick’s sub-par Captain Marvel series, so you know this comic’s quality!) tries to force in a TON of world-building alongside a TON of ridiculously complicated plot and, as a result, it’s utterly baffling to follow.
As Some Guy says in issue #3: “Must be frustrating not knowing what’s going on, just thrown in the middle of a huge mess and left to sort it out for yourself” - YES! Unfortunately that’s the only sensible piece of dialogue Some Guy says before he goes back to The Impossible To Follow Plot.
Hilariously there’s going to be a Volume 2 - loving the optimism, guys!
They need to rename Boom to Bust. Their comics are the pits!
This book is beyond boring. I was thinking of literally anything while reading this and, when I paid attention to it, I immediately forgot what I’d just read. Or maybe that was my brain rejecting it as too crap even to retain vaguely as memory. Good job, brain. Just for that I’ll take it easier on the beer from now on.
Dead Letters is like throwing wet bread at a coconut shy and hoping to somehow win a balloon. That simile doesn’t make sense but neither does Dead Letters. Ok, let’s power through this, guys - stay with me!
Purgatory is entirely constructed out of peoples’ perceptions of it meaning it could look like anything but instead it looks and is just another grimy city, like say New York. Why? People are unimaginative I guess, or maybe the creative team are telling us that they think people as a whole tend to fall back on what they know rather than do anything different?
It’s uninspiring and uninteresting to look at - the artist’s name is Chris Visions which is ironic because he clearly has none. His “vision” of a potentially unique take on the afterlife is to replicate what already exists on Earth. And it looks like shit.
It also turns out you can get gored and hurt with guns and celestial knives. Why do they exist in the afterlife? Who knows? Exactly why God and the Devil’s forces are so intent on getting Some Guy to work for them is also a mystery - he’s just Some Guy. These forces are also incredibly stupid. Some Guy is able to convince each one that he’s working for them every time they catch up with him.
God’s Forces: It’s Some Guy - hey, we’re gonna beatchoo!
Some Guy: No, look I’m really working for youse swell fellas.
God’s Forces: Duh, yeah that makes sense. See you later!
Some Guy: Idiots…
Devil’s Forces: It’s Some Guy - get him!
Some Guy: No, I’m on your side, see?
Devil’s Forces: That checks out. You’re the best, Some Guy!
Some Guy (turns to reader): Are you really still reading this drek? You know Batman comics exist, right?
The plot is just one big convoluted mess with Some Guy double-crossing one side over the other while he looks for Some Girl and Some Answers that you couldn’t possibly care about because you don’t know what’s happening. Christopher Sebela (who’s worked on Kelly Sue DeConnick’s sub-par Captain Marvel series, so you know this comic’s quality!) tries to force in a TON of world-building alongside a TON of ridiculously complicated plot and, as a result, it’s utterly baffling to follow.
As Some Guy says in issue #3: “Must be frustrating not knowing what’s going on, just thrown in the middle of a huge mess and left to sort it out for yourself” - YES! Unfortunately that’s the only sensible piece of dialogue Some Guy says before he goes back to The Impossible To Follow Plot.
Hilariously there’s going to be a Volume 2 - loving the optimism, guys!
They need to rename Boom to Bust. Their comics are the pits!
December 13, 2019
Great start to a series. The story could even have been developed into a full-length novel. Meet Sam Whistler who is running around in his pajamas with a hole in his side. And, he's caught in the middle of a gang war where he's got to choose a side. Fifties-era hoodlums are fighting in out with insane firepower on the streets. It's rough. It's tough. It's real Hardboiled. Too bad Sam doesn't remember who he is or how he got here wherever here is. And wait till you figure it out.
June 25, 2016
I have zero idea what book Sam read, though it's been a year and a half, so he probably doesn't either.
Our story opens with an amnesiac waking up in a grungy motel room with a gun beside him and the phone ringing. The caller says the above and we're off to the races without knowing why.
We eventually learn that we are in a limbo of sorts and are being recruited to hunt down some woman by a representative of god. Limbo is exactly what you expect, if what you expect is a 1930's gang war (I mean, that's what I expect). Our lead is a bad man who does bad things to worse people, and basically plays everyone against the middle while trying to learn the truth while everyone is lying to him. That anything he does works is a little convenient, and the whole work is a little wordy (holy crap, you have to read!!! Like words and stuff!!!), but I had a grand time with it.
My main gripe, besides the above convenience, is that there are a couple of time when they are flipping between two scenes quickly and the art doesn't help enough with keeping things straight. But it was still fun, and I'm going to read some more.
They're coming, Sam. You'd better start running.
Our story opens with an amnesiac waking up in a grungy motel room with a gun beside him and the phone ringing. The caller says the above and we're off to the races without knowing why.
We eventually learn that we are in a limbo of sorts and are being recruited to hunt down some woman by a representative of god. Limbo is exactly what you expect, if what you expect is a 1930's gang war (I mean, that's what I expect). Our lead is a bad man who does bad things to worse people, and basically plays everyone against the middle while trying to learn the truth while everyone is lying to him. That anything he does works is a little convenient, and the whole work is a little wordy (holy crap, you have to read!!! Like words and stuff!!!), but I had a grand time with it.
My main gripe, besides the above convenience, is that there are a couple of time when they are flipping between two scenes quickly and the art doesn't help enough with keeping things straight. But it was still fun, and I'm going to read some more.
Do you ever wonder whether a lie is a lie if god tells it?
August 23, 2018
It was alright. The opening was compelling. The art work was a bit blurry at times and made it hard to distinguish between characters. I didn’t really feel a deep connection with any of the characters, unfortunately. The two leaders of the warring factions seemed incredibly naive. The mystery of this woman they were searching for seemed almost inconsequential. Towards the end you’re moving through space and time with few cues to guide you from one scene to the next.
I think the concept was interesting and it had a great opening hook. I think the writer and artist were talented. The story just involved too many and moved rather quickly and not many of the characters or plot points stuck out after the first book.
I think the concept was interesting and it had a great opening hook. I think the writer and artist were talented. The story just involved too many and moved rather quickly and not many of the characters or plot points stuck out after the first book.
December 31, 2014
This would be 4 stars if the art wasn't so incredibly busy and the writing wasn't so wordy. I almost feel like it would've made a better book than a comic.
July 30, 2021
Dead Letters asi nesadne každému, pretože jednak je to strašne ale strašne napratané textom, a jednak je art dosť neprehladný a je šanca, že sa v ňom stratíte. Napriek tomu som to z nejakého divného emočného rozpoloženia brala ako plusy a zhltla som to na jedno prečítanie. Príbeh v žiadnom prípade nejde popísať v pár vetách, ako je to urobené v popise, ktorý vôbec, ale vôbec nič nehovorí o tom, čo sa tam deje. Celé je to dobre prepracovaný plán jedného chlapa ako prežiť v "meste", ktorému vládnu gangy a v pozadí toho celého sa deje ešte viac. Sebela ma vždy prekvapí a teším sa na druhý a tretí book.
June 30, 2018
Just reread this because I finally got volume 2 and wanted the story fresh in my brain! I love the artwork by Chris Visions so much I have to study every panel slowly. Things you might not give a second thought to, like rain running off of a car, are done with such expertise it really amazes me. Looking forward to continuing the story.
December 31, 2017
This was a cool idea, but really confusing. Often it was hard to tell who was speaking. The art style is like someone inked storyboards. Kind of cool and different, unfortunately it was hard to tell who was who sometimes. I think I would have liked it a lot more if it was shorter (maybe 6 issues instead of 12). I really liked the ending.
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April 9, 2022Feels like there's been a quiet surge of afterlife noir stories these past few years – maybe they were all blown away by Watters and Wijngaard's Limbo and wanted some of that action? But even when I otherwise like the creators involved, as with Max Bemis on Heavy, most of them don't do it for me. So it proves here, in a series which fucks my theory by predating Limbo, and has a lot of overlap down to the protagonist waking up with no memory in a strange town, but which even if it did this first, certainly doesn't do it best. It doesn't help that where Limbo has a luminous strangeness, this one gives its Purgatory/Limbo/The In-Between Place, AKA 'Here', quite a lumpen look, going on plain ugly. The plot is the old standard of the stranger in town playing both gangs against each other, except that here he's a stranger to himself too, and it takes more to kill anyone because they're dead already. Except not really enough more, because then you might need to do a bit more thinking about how the story is supposed to work. There's definitely something here, it's not one of those entirely half-arsed comics that should have been an elevator pitch. But it's not for me.
February 18, 2023
A detective wakes up in Purgatory. It looks just like New York. Three different factions want him dead but every time someone catches him he's able to convince them he's on their side even though he's not a con man or smooth talker.
It had potential but this is over written and Chris Visions's artistic vision is to just scribble as much as he can on every page. I couldn't tell what was happening in half this book. Disappointed!
It had potential but this is over written and Chris Visions's artistic vision is to just scribble as much as he can on every page. I couldn't tell what was happening in half this book. Disappointed!
October 10, 2020
Un misto fra noir, thriller ma il tutto dalle tinte acquerellate e quasi troppo tenui.
Non diverte, non incuriosisce: tantissima carne al fuoco ma i salti narrativi sono eccessivi e la voce narrante interna (del protagonista, come fosse un detective dei vecchi film in bianco e nero) diventa didascalica, insopportabile e ripetitiva.
Un volume bello solo da vedere.
Non diverte, non incuriosisce: tantissima carne al fuoco ma i salti narrativi sono eccessivi e la voce narrante interna (del protagonista, come fosse un detective dei vecchi film in bianco e nero) diventa didascalica, insopportabile e ripetitiva.
Un volume bello solo da vedere.
June 1, 2020
DNF - Read the first 60 pages
Such an evocative cover, such a generic, messily told story. The arteork is interesting, but looks unfinished. How this ever got several issues is a mystery to me.
Such an evocative cover, such a generic, messily told story. The arteork is interesting, but looks unfinished. How this ever got several issues is a mystery to me.
July 3, 2025
It was okay. There was an interesting story, a good concept behind it, but I just didn't ever really feel like it was going somewhere.
October 26, 2023
Beautiful artwork and a lovely storyline!
Life ain't fair.
Turns out Death ain't either.
This is the story of Sam Whistler who finds himself in bandages in a motel but is not able to recall how he got there.
I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Green Hornet by Al Hirt 🎵
August 21, 2014
You're doing a series about What Lies Beyond. You could involve literally anything, any part of the human spirit you can think of - and you choose "seedy urban underbelly". When the main character was monologuing about how unfair it was that the afterlife was just like normal life, I was entirely forced to agree. And the addition of soul drugs and being able to vaguely kill souls and a super murder henchman just makes the possibilities even less taken advantage of.
And in the last issue, when things do go to a bigger scale... it still feels small. Like the only thing that the story wants to prove is... what? That everyone at every level of existence is obsessed with revenge and petty slights, on and on amen?
The thing about good noir is that it goes into the pettiness to fight back against it. It throws itself headlong into the pointlessness so that some morsel of justice might be scraped off the bottom. And if it fails, then it's a tragedy.
But this isn't a tragic lack of justice, because no one was really trying for justice. The main character overturns the system for basically nothing and knows it's for basically nothing. It's almost Kafkaesque, really, and if it was played that way, it might work - but instead it just kind of gets swallowed up in its own grittiness.
(I quite like the art, though. Very expressive and fluid without dissolving into vague streaks of color like many similar styles do.)
And in the last issue, when things do go to a bigger scale... it still feels small. Like the only thing that the story wants to prove is... what? That everyone at every level of existence is obsessed with revenge and petty slights, on and on amen?
The thing about good noir is that it goes into the pettiness to fight back against it. It throws itself headlong into the pointlessness so that some morsel of justice might be scraped off the bottom. And if it fails, then it's a tragedy.
But this isn't a tragic lack of justice, because no one was really trying for justice. The main character overturns the system for basically nothing and knows it's for basically nothing. It's almost Kafkaesque, really, and if it was played that way, it might work - but instead it just kind of gets swallowed up in its own grittiness.
(I quite like the art, though. Very expressive and fluid without dissolving into vague streaks of color like many similar styles do.)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 21, 2015
I read the four issues of this volume over a long span of time because I just wasn't interested enough to read them quickly, yet I felt I should keep reading in case it became interesting. For me, it did not, though my protracted reading probably didn't help make the plot any more comprehensible. Perhaps if the themes or tone of the work had appealed to me more, I'd feel differently, but Abrahamic mythology and gangster stories both tend to bore me, and apparently mixing them together doesn't make it better.
September 3, 2014
Dead Letters was an alternative, and interesting, take on the after-life. This volume was very noir like, though the main character wasn't a detective, so it broke from the typical. The artwork was very interesting, mostly quite loose and sketchy, but with a lot of movement. I really liked it for the most part, though some of it seemed a little rushed. The storyline was interesting and I would definitely look for Volume 2.
January 13, 2015
a very clever little book, making me think about life after death, where our souls go, do we feel or remember anything.
what happens if the place where we go to be sorted into heaven and hell turns out to be a lot like earth, full of temptation, guns, drugs, and pain?
Dead Letters found a way to get you to think about those things while telling you a captivating sorry of revenge, betrayal, and attempted murder. can you die if you're already dead?
what happens if the place where we go to be sorted into heaven and hell turns out to be a lot like earth, full of temptation, guns, drugs, and pain?
Dead Letters found a way to get you to think about those things while telling you a captivating sorry of revenge, betrayal, and attempted murder. can you die if you're already dead?
August 13, 2015
Star rating: 2.5ish
I don't know how to feel about this first volume. I switched between being intrigued and being confused. I liked the art and I liked the premise. I can't really make sense of everything tho, especially the ending. I did enjoy it to some extend. Didn't love it.
Not planning on continuing this serie.
I don't know how to feel about this first volume. I switched between being intrigued and being confused. I liked the art and I liked the premise. I can't really make sense of everything tho, especially the ending. I did enjoy it to some extend. Didn't love it.
Not planning on continuing this serie.
August 8, 2014
Combining the Bourne Identity with a mob war and mythological overtones gets you a fantastic comic in Dead Letters #1. Writer Christopher Sebela has the reader craving more from the very start. Read more at http://boundingintocomics.blogspot.nl...
October 18, 2015
I really enjoyed the scratchy art style and interesting premise of the first issue and was very keen to read more, however, I don't remember anything else that happened in the remaining issues after that, so I won't be reading more any time soon, if ever.
December 19, 2015
Only 2 things are good about Dead Letters:
1. The cover
2. The moment they reveal he is in (SPOILER) purgatory.
1. The cover
2. The moment they reveal he is in (SPOILER) purgatory.
November 15, 2016
I liked the art style. I was intrigued by the idea of the place and some of the characters have interesting potential. the story feels a bit disjointed but overall I liked it!
did-not-finish
December 2, 2016Can't even get through issue one. Not for me.
December 4, 2016
Not too bad. The art is amazing. The story was a take on purgatory meets Memento.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 12, 2017
Voilà un comics facilement oubliable, aussi bien par son scénario que par ses dessins...
Read
October 15, 2014Issues #1-4
March 1, 2016
I don't know what I just read or why.
October 22, 2018
Enjoyed this. Really liked the setting. Only con is it was kinda hard to follow
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews