Blue Estate #4

Written by Viktor Kalvachev, Kosta Yanev, and Andrew Osborne
Art by Viktor Kalvachev, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, and Paul Maybury

Blue Estate continues to be both one of the most intriguing new series to come out of Image's recent creator-owned Renaissance, and also one of its most perplexing.  The series is most definitely written for the trade, as scenes blend between issues (#3 ends with a woman swimming in a pool, and this issue begins with us seeing who she is).  In a lot of ways, this comic reminds me of one long steady-cam shot, where a filmmaker meanders in what he chooses to film, but maintains the consistency of the shot.  If that makes sense.

There are lots of little pieces being sprinkled around this comic, as just about every character is connected to every other, in a myriad of ways.  This issue opens with the girlfriend of a Russian mobster practicing her scene for her film debut at the house of the actor we met in the first issue, whose wife Rachel is pretending to be drunk to gain information about her husband, which she passes on to her AA sponsor, who is a hitman, while the mobster tortures the Uzbek cokehead we met last issue, and so on, and so on.  It's like the writers are just exploring these connections, without really having a set plot in mind.

With the character work being this good, I'm perfectly okay with that.  This series has a lot in common with long-running soap operas, and so far, I'm just enjoying attaching puzzle pieces in my head.  The varying and shifting art styles on this book, as the pages cycle through the four artists attached to the project, help keep things fresh and visually interesting.

I am really enjoying this series, although at this point, I think I would recommend that people trade wait it, as picking up a random issue will be utterly confusing.