Blood & Thunder #1: A Lived-In World and a Sarcastic Gun

Bounty hunter Blood Bledsoe is chasing a criminal named Herp through the floor, asteroid city Metro 1’s lowest level. Blood & Thunder #1 tracks this bounty hunter and her gun as they pursue and capture Herp. Instead of the usual contraband, though, Blood discovers that Herp was in possession of books, an antiquated way to store information. These books contain historical information that might threaten Metro 1’s human leadership.

Blood & Thunder #1 has three beginnings in a sense, each one flowing quickly from the last. One seems almost inconsequential but proves important later. One seems urgent and critical to the issue only to fall by the wayside. And one, coming later in the issue than one might expect, is the exciting real deal. The opening pages don’t feel like misdirection, though, so much as world building with a flourish.

The world itself isn’t radical in design. Blood & Thunder #1 introduces a setting that relies both on a class structure, literally from top to bottom in levels within the asteroid community. This works hand in hand with a human prejudice aimed at aliens whom they call exos.

By the time the reader encounters Blood, her world already feels real and lived in. She is a natural part of it. Indeed, this makes the long extended dialogue sequence in the latter half of Blood & Thunder #1 work particularly well as a character building scene. In laying out Blood’s backstory, Cereno doesn’t have to go too far into the weeds on “why” Blood faced the obstacles in her past that she did because he’s already sketched out how the world Blood exists in works.

Cereno introduces a good source of levity alongside Blood in the form of her gun, Thunder. It has a definite personality, sounding more like a friend than a piece of smart technology. It also talks back.

Metro 1 is a thriving, lived in world. Su’s art is heavily detailed on Blood & Thunder #1’s opening pages. The different tiers communicate the class structure as effectively as Cereno’s dialogue–perhaps even more so. Msassyk’s coloring further reinforces this. The tiers don’t change in color in uniform fashion. The first is bright, as though in a planet’s daylight. The second tier that the creative team presents looks not too much unlike the first when it comes to buildings and population, but its ambiance is more akin to twilight. The next tier, still lower, is filled with run down and broken buildings. Rather than being dark, the light is the kind of hazy brown/yellow that is associated with pollution. The ground and buildings are covered with a layer of brown. The next tier is bright with artificial colors put off by neon lights–the look of a seedy “red light” district.

The “exo” designs are novel. Su draws some individuals that look vaguely human in body type and others that would qualify as “creatures” were they in a horror story rather than a space science fiction story.

Blood’s appearance is so minimally different that it’s unlikely readers will guess she is an exo, but unusual enough that when it’s pointed out she’s an exo it makes sense. The character design makes it easier to connect with her even as her exo status serves Cereno’s larger story.

Wooton keeps dialogue bubbles well organized. Blood & Thunder #1 isn’t especially text heavy, though there are some sequences where dialogue threatens to overtake art. In these instances, Wooton pushes bubbles as close to panel edges as possible and also uses longer tails linking them to characters. Thunder’s caption boxes are a creative enough design to reinforce the novelty of an interactive, talking gun but not overshadow anything around them.