Bloodhound: Crowbar Medicine #5 Review
“Crowbar Medicine, Part 5”
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Dan Jolley
Pencils: Leonard Kirk
Inks: Robin Riggs
Colors: Moose Baumann
Letters: Rob Leigh
Covers: Leonard Kirk w/ Moose Baumann
Review by Scott Keys
Bloodhound: Crowbar Medicine #5 is, in my humble opinion, in contention for “Best Single Issue.” Picking up where issue 4 left off, Terminus, Clev and Saffron are now inside Morgenstern’s hideout. The “team” confronts some of Morgenstern’s lackeys on their way to their final confrontation, when they are shockingly met head on by Morgenstern himself… AND his powers! Morgenstern takes all three down single-handedly, and starts to do the “villainy-thing” of telling them what his plans are before he kills them. However, Morgenstern miscalculated his villainous rant to bring up some of Clev’s shortcomings, which lead to some of the most brutally violent comic pages I’ve ever seen! Clev literally rips his arms out of the chains Morgenstern had him in and begins bludgeoning Morgenstern with a crowbar and eventually killing him (NOW I understand why this was called Crowbar Medicine!). The book ends on a very somber note with a beaten and bruised Clev watching Michelle’s funeral from afar and Trish turning away from him as she walks by.
This book was one of the most powerful and heart-wrenching comics I’ve ever read, but I’m SO glad that I did. This is amazing storytelling here folks! The entire team knocks it out of the park here. Jolley’s writing is pitch-perfect, hitting all the right notes in the emotional spectrum to illicit the corresponding emotion from the reader. You feel the soul crushing pain of loss, the unbridled rage, and the aforementioned sombering feeling of rejection. You really couldn’t ask for much better writing.
Lest we forget, however, that these pitch-perfect emotional notes were expertly knocked out of the park by the amazing art team of Kirk, Riggs, and Baumann. You see every ounce of that emotion that Jolley poured into this book thanks to this outstanding team! And almost all of that emotion is told with the character’s eyes, especially Clev’s. As I mentioned before, the final confrontation of Clev and Morgenstern was one of the bloodiest, most brutal sequences I’ve ever seen, and the art team made sure you felt every swing of that crowbar. It was very reminiscent of what the Joker did to Jason Todd, without the censorship of the actual act, depicting how truly disfiguring it would be to be beaten with a metal crowbar.
I tip my hat to this amazing team of creators and I hope to see even more of Clev and Saffron in the future!
Art: 5 / 5
Story: 5 / 5
Overall: 5 / 5
Scott Keys is a father, Butler University grad, pharmacist, and full-time comic nerd. You can follow his adventures around the spinner-rack and his Incoherent Comic Book Ramblings on:
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