Loveless, Vol. 2: Thicker Than Blackwater

Loveless #2

by Brian Azzarello, Danijel Žeželj (Illustrator), Marcelo Frusín (Illustrator)

Eisner award-winning writer Brian Azzarello (100 BULLETS, SUPERMAN: FOR TOMORROW) creates a Western for the new millennium. Reuniting with his HELLBLAZER collaborator, artist Marcelo Frusin, Azzarello fashions a tough-as-nails saga that combines all the bloody action and atmosphere of a Sergio Leone film with the provocative storytelling of HBO's Deadwood.

Wes Cutter is a wanted man running from a violent past - the horrors of the Civil War, a brutal stint in a Union prison camp, and the savage fallout of Reconstruction. Now he's on a quest for the one thing in short supply: peace. Joining Wes is his beautiful wife Ruth, a woman who has been to hell and back herself - and hides dark secrets of her own. The road they travel will be a bloody one, leaving a trail of bodies stretching from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Westerns, Historical Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Thriller, Comic Book

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Brian Azzarello (born in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American comic book writer. He came to prominence with 100 Bullets, published by DC Comics' mature-audience imprint Vertigo. He and Argentine artist Eduardo Risso, with whom Azzarello first worked on Jonny Double, won the 2001 Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story for 100 Bullets #15–18: "Hang Up on the Hang Low".

Azzarello has written for Batman ("Broken City", art by Risso; "Batman/Deathblow: After the Fire", art by Lee Bermejo, Tim Bradstreet, & Mick Gray) and Superman ("For Tomorrow", art by Jim Lee).

In 2005, Azzarello began a new creator-owned series, the western Loveless, with artist Marcelo Frusin.

As of 2007, Azzarello is married to fellow comic-book writer and illustrator Jill Thompson.

information taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Az...

Reviews

[Devon Munn]

Proof your brain can trick you: I thought I had finished this but I simply forgot cause I wrote down my schedule to read last year it I was roo ambitious

[Timo]

This series does not just deliver what it keep promising to deliver. Oh well, there is only one collection left after this, so I shall give it one last chance.

[Brad]

Like Deadwood, but comics... That’s how everyone describes Brian Azzarello and Marcelo Frusin’s Loveless, because both are foul-mouthed, grisly, and well-written.
The second volume starts off with flashbacks for Wes Cutter, his wife Ruth, and former slave Atticus Mann (all drawn by Daniel Zezelj). Then, things get back into gear with the story of a couple killed in their house, and a bounty hunter coming to Blackwater to kill Wes, now the sherrif in town.
The series has only been around for 12 issues, but I already am confused by some of the characters. Azzarello writes sly, witty, dialogue, but is never content with enough subplots and secondary characters. While I enjoy reading this and 100 Bullets, I don’t have the attention span and memory to properly appreciate them. Maybe once he’s finished with each book, I’ll go back and read it all the way through.

[Neil]

Gave this series one more chance, and it's just more of the same. Occasionally a cool showdown type scene, but overall not worth it.

[Matt Spencer]

Things pick up considerably from Vol 1, and this one certainly makes with the startling game-changer plot swerves. One of the strongest aspects that sets the series apart is how Wes Cutter, as a protagonist, is far too much of a cruel, broken product of his time/environment to be taken at face value as the "cool, badass Spaghetti Western style antihero" we're initially tempted to see him as, and no one else here gets a pass either. Marcelo Frusin remains pitch perfect for the sections he still draws, though I can't say I'm a fan Danijel Zezelj's work, at least not here...It's like he's trying to evoke an "old-timey photograph" effect, but only serves to create distance from the story/characters.

[Sebastián]

Nope, no me convence. Veremos si el último número remonta pero los personajes se me hacen indescifrables (de mala manera), me falta contexto de la historia de Estados Unidos como para entender ciertas cosas de la guerra esta de la confederación pero la historia no me atrapa lo suficiente para investigar. Y el prota se coje un cadaver??? Kjjj

[Matthew J.]

OK, the second volume is definitely better. It gets into the idea of cycles of violence, and gives if not a nuanced take, a slightly less clumsy take on some things. I still can't say I really enjoyed it, but if you like especially ugly Westerns, you might. It still seems overly crass in the way so many Vertigo comics were. Still, a step up from volume 1.

[Underland_Queen]

Rascism hidden under the cloak of "historical accuracy". Wasn't a fan. Told as non-linear vignettes with multiple pov's. Character design was also a little hard to keep track of with some of the faces blending into each other. Would not read again, buy or recommend. It just wasn't my thing but interesting colour palette.

[Sarah]

Pretty crap 1.5 stars

[John J Milton]

Confusing, difficult to make faces apart, and seem to lack pages to make the story more understandable

[Christopher Yuen]

Not on the same level as the first tpb, but still enjoyable. I wish they kept Marcelo Frusin on the interior pencils throughout.

[Anderson Cardoso]

Muito boa a continuação que vai te prender mais uma vez.

[Robert Beveridge]

Brian Azzarello, Loveless: Thicker than Blackwater (Vertigo, 2007)

After the nastiness that plagued the first volume of Loveless, did you really expect things to get better? This is the world of Brian Azzarello, folks, and in this world, things do not end well. The carpetbaggers decided to kill two (or, in fact, many more) birds with one stone by appointing Wes Cutter the Sheriff of Blackwater; no one had any idea he'd actually take the job seriously, least of all Wes Cutter himself. But when a series of murders turns up on his doorstep, what's a sheriff to do? Investigate, of course, but the closer Cutter gets to who's behind the murders, the less sure he is he wants to know what's actually going on here. And, of course, this is Azzarello, and things end about the way you expect them to, but then, that's part of the charm of Brian Azzarello. *** ½

[Sophie]

I still didn't like this any better than the first volume. It's very bleak and depressing and there's no character that's even remotely sympathetic. I know people can be horrible, but this paints the kind of picture I don't want to look at. I think what bothers me is that there seems to be no hope at all - no hope and no point. I have the third volume here, so I'm going to read that as well, but I have to say I prefer Jonah Hex.

What I dislike most, I think, is the crudeness. Again, I've watched Deadwood, so I don't shock easily, but would a woman who is as much in love with her husband as Ruth seems to be really say that his cock is the thing she misses most about him? I dunno, maybe I'm too much of a romantic, but scenes like that one seem to be too gratuitous for me.

[Fugo Feedback]

Y acá se va todo al carajo, para bien. ¿Cómo seguir una serie hasta un tercer tomo cuando a fines del segundo no queda casi nadie vivo de los personajes recurrentes? Lea Loveless y tendrá la respuesta. Con el correr de los capítulos la serie gana en impredecible y en impresionante. Guion y dibujo se unen con armonía y sinergia y todos salen ganando. Particularmente interesante me pareció el recurso de usar "fantasmas" para los flashbacks. Creo que en el #1 ya lo usaban, pero es acá donde empiezan a ser habituales en casi todos los capítulos las visitas de los personajes que estiraron la pata. O mejor dicho, los vivos visitando silenciosamente a sus muertos y sus propias versiones pretéritas. La escena final, una gran incógnita que no se resuelve hasta bien entrado el tomo siguiente.

[Mikael Kuoppala]

The first volume of Loveless "A Kin of Homecoming" left me eagerly waiting for more. The book offered top-grade storytelling and tackled heavy themes directly and fearlessly, offering a modern, analytical viewpoint into the years following the American Civil War.

"Thicker than Blackwater" follows organically from "A Kin of Homecoming," but Brian Azzarello doesn't quite manage to keep his storylines and characters in a cohesive formation. The volume feels fractured and unfocused compared with the extremely sharp takeoff the saga started out with. Interesting to see where all of this is headed, though.

[jlf]

I think I have a problem with Brian Azzarello's writing. You can always tell that there's some kind of "big picture" thing going on with his series, but you can never really get at it by reading an issue or two at a time. If it lowers you in my eyes for me to tell you that I still don't know what he's trying to say with Loveless, so fucking be it. And, on top of his minimalist dialogue, there's always this vague-looking art to go along with it. I might check this out when the series ends, but I won't be buying the next trade until then if I buy it at all.

[Victor Drax]

En este libro empiezan los problemas. La historia se mantiene interesante, pero el cambio de artista (de Frusin a Žeželj) es un duro golpe. El arte de Žeželj hace que a veces cueste identificar qué está pasando.
Y Azzarello, por alguna razón, deja cabos sueltos en la historia, líneas de trama que empiezan y no van a ningún lado. Otro defecto es que muchos personajes se parecen entre sí, entonces cuesta identificar quién es quién.

Es interesante, pero just by a little.

[Trevor Oakley]

Wow...this is a pretty brutal book, but I imagine the Civil War was in many ways brutal off the battlefields as well as on. A man once thought dead, captured up north, returns to Blackwater and is made sheriff of the town. Blackwater attracts death, crime, sex, and plenty of hot lead exchanges. There are no "good guys" in this book.

[Elh R']

I don't know what this vol. was about. I read it in a couple of hours but, I don't have a clue about what was this about ...

The art is ok, and the book itself is funny and have a good rhythm, but the story, I haven't a clue what this was about ...

[Amy]

Beautiful art by Danijel Žeželj in this. I wish he could have done all of it.
I'm not entirely sure I understood what was going on during most of this, but I enjoyed reading it, and it left me wanting more.

[Devin Bruce]

Last read November 4, 2007.

[Justin]

I'm just not into this series...

[Craig]

Even more fun.

[Gonzalo Oyanedel]

Un traspaso e historias más íntimas que dan el contexto a la idea central. Buen puente al descenlace.

[Matt Sabonis]

A good second volume. The flashbacks at the beginning are standouts, and the subtlety the characters gain is great.

[pierlapo quimby]

Capita a volte che dialoghi troppo secchi, tagliati con l'accetta, e una sceneggiatura sincopata, con rapidi cambi di scena, non facciano una storia cruda e dinamica, ma una mezza storia.

[Joseph Young]

Not that compelling. Crude and violent, with not any likeable characters.

[Ashkin Ayub]

I need to complete this series no matter what :s *arrgh*

[Mark]

(See review for Volume 3)