Turf #3

Written by Jonathan Ross
Art by Tommy Lee Edwards

Turf is now one-half done, and continues to get better with each new issue.  When I read the first comic, I thought that Ross had a lot of good ideas, but was tossing them all at the page like pasta against the wall, and hoping something would stick.  Now, as the story has progressed, and he's started to tone down his excessive verbiage (this is still a wordy comic, but we're out of Kevin Smith land), it's become clear that he had a pretty involved and solid plot laid out from the beginning.

A lot of big things happen in this issue.  The Strigoli (not vampires) make their move on the police force, while Stefan Dragonmir makes his move for leadership, challenging his brother, who later is helped by Susie, our heroine.  While all this is going on, the gangster Eddie Falco (anyone else think of the Sopranos when you hear that name?) deepens his partnership with the alien Squeed, and they start looking for partners to help them take on the Dragonmir clan.

While this is a lot of plot to cram into this comic, Ross still finds time to work on and develop these characters, especially the crooked Officer O'Leary, who gets his own old school comic page explaining what a rotten sort he really is.

Few artists other than Tommy Lee Edwards would be able to pull off this comic - a Prohibition-era gangster/vampire/alien piece.  His work is phenomenal as usual.  I hope the wait before the next issue isn't as long as the wait for this issue was.