Review – Savage Things #2

Savage Things #2 – 
Vertigo Comics
Written by Justin Jordan
Illustrated by Ibrahim Moustafa
Colors by Jordan Boyd
Letters by Josh Reed
Cover by John Paul Leon
One of the greatest things about Vertigo is, they have never been afraid to push the envelope to tell a great story.  Imagine a group of killers, hand selected and trained since they were children, to carry out unspeakable acts.  Sound familiar?  Trust me…not like this.  This story, created by Justin Jordan and Ibrahim Moustafa, is so much more than that.  So if you’re not familiar, let me introduce you to Savage Things.
(SPOILER WARNING:  May contain spoilers for ISSUE ONE of Savage Things, but I will not spoil any major details of Issue 2.)
Quick recap, we see the story about how Abel was brought into the fold in the last issue and we also find out a little bit about Cain.  Where this issue picks up is after Abel is apprehended by a strike team, essentially in response to the “message” that was sent in the hotel massacre.  We find out very little about what Abel has been doing, but we do get some nice details that we were unaware of in the first issue.  We also get another flashback story, which picks up where the last one left off, that is very important to the story going forward.  Perhaps the biggest thing we learn is the fate of Black Forest and what may be the driving force behind everything that’s going on.  That leads to a confrontation later on in the issue with a familiar face at a local hospital.  The last back and forth between Abel and Lt. Singh really paints a chilling picture going into Issue 3.   
I’m an unapologetic fan of Justin Jordan’s work as a whole, but this book immediately grabbed me from the first issue.  Not just because of the structure of everything that has been put together, but the raw emotion of it all.  It’s brutal, and it lives up to the name savage, but this book DEMANDS your attention page after page.  You immediately have an opinion, one way or the other, about Abel.  No matter how you feel about him, it makes you want to keep reading.  It also brings up an ethical dilemma that create an even larger discussion.  That’s what good comics do.  They entertain you, but they make you want to talk to your friends about them.  I certainly can’t forget the amazing work from Moustafa, as well.  There were a couple of panels in this book specifically that really wowed me (in particular one that appeared before the takeover at the hospital.)  This will probably be the first issue I read in my weekly stack until the we get to the eighth, and I hope not final, issue.
RATING:  PULL / BUY