Dead Acre: Black Badge #4: A Complete Resolution

Dead Acre: Black Badge #4 reads like a standard conclusion to a murder mystery at first. The werewolves from the previous issue dispatched, Crowley returns to the bar where his time in Dead Acre began. For several pages it feels like the supernatural portion of the storyline has come to an end. Unfortunately there’s still a necromancer in town.

Crowley is very grounded in Dead Acre Black Badge #4’s opening pages. These type of Crowley scenes are the best moments in the series by far. Crowley is still very much a man of the old west, demon hunter or no. Bunn does a very good job continuing to develop Crowley even in this final issue. Crowley being a fully realized character, supernatural or not, works very well in the issue’s favor as its middle deteriorates largely into a run and gun fight with a necromancer and his assortment of raised skeletons. Indeed, from a story point of view, this extended action sequence is the issue’s least compelling stretch.

The necromancer action sequence’s saving grace is the art. Brown’s consistent high level of detail adds a visceral quality to the fight despite the fact that one side of that fight is nothing but skeletons. Brown uses a high amount of short lines, thin and thick, to give the skeletons’ bones an appearance of texture. That texture further helps develop dimension for the bones and then skeletons writ large. The panels featuring fighting between Crowley and the skeletons have depth.

This fight also continues to showcase how the expressive characters have been a strength of the whole series. Crowley’s angry determination during the fight is clearly visible both in closeup panels and more distant images. Elsewhere in the issue this expressiveness, made especially possible by Brown’s liberal use of lines to delineate features on characters’ faces, helps build additional layers of emotion. This is particularly the case in Crowley’s final scene with Rosa.

Murder mystery solved and necromancer dispatched, the issue returns to character centric concerns. Crowley once more visits with Rosa, widow of the murdered Massey. The conversation begins as a rumination on Massey’s murder and the man who killed him before turning to something much more personal–Rosa’s prior connection to Crowley in his past life. This is a winning scene. The story is completely resolved at this point, but the issue takes the time to reveal something new about the main character. It’s a wonderful piece of backstory for Crowley that simultaneously puts a button on the first four issues and hints of potential further revelations for the future.

Bunn writes a lot of internal monologue for Crowley leading to some very text heavy pages. The lettering choices from AndWorld Design keep the caption boxes well organized, sometimes overlapping panel borders to both keep the captions flowing and easy to follow and to stay as out of the way of Brown’s art as possible.

Coloring in Dead Acre Black Badge #4 has a very layered look to it due to very subtle transitions in colors’ hues. This is apparent throughout the issue with interior backgrounds, objects, and characters. When it comes to characters, the subtle transitions work well with Brown’s art to add dimension to faces and emphasize expressions. The coloring is most impressive, though, with the nighttime exteriors.