Bookshots: Pumping new life into the corpse of the book review
Title:
120 Doses
Who Wrote It?:
Burnt Tongues contributor, Neil Krolicki (with art by Jason McQuitty and John Rauch).
Plot in a Box:
Part crime thriller, part medical horror, we follow struggling writer Owen Jelinsky into Port Drogo, who’s most lucrative local trade is erasing the identities of ruthless criminals through radical reconstructive surgeries.
Invent a New Title For This Book:
Port Drogo or Reanimated.
Read This If You Liked:
100 Bullets, Heavy Liquid, Aeon Flux and/or Sin City.
Meet the Book’s Lead(s):
Owen Jelinsky is the down on his luck author, trying to make a comeback. Gristle is a broken man so buried in deception he hardly knows what’s up and what’s down.
Said Lead(s) Would Be Portrayed In a Movie By:
Keanu Reeves as Owen Jelinsky and Al Pacino as Gristle.
Setting: Would You Want to Live There?
No way. This Blade Runner meets Mad Max setting is one where your debauchery leads to certain death—one drink laced, one girl on the take, and you’re waking up in an alley dead.
What was your favorite sentence?
Snappy dresser next to me with a face that looks like it caught on fire and was then put out with a bike chain, I’m supposed to call him 'Gristle.'
The Verdict:
I get comics in the mail all the time from DC, Vertigo, Marvel, Dark Horse, you name it, and this debut comic from Neil Krolicki and his partners is as slick and well done as any of them. For an independent project like this, it really holds up well. Not only is the writing superb, but the art, the graphics—wow. There are some amazing indie comics out there, and 120 Doses fits in with the best of them.
The story is one that draws you right in, the violence evident from the first pages. The colors and graphics, the nightclubs and skylines, the women—they draw your eye from one panel to the next. The writing gives you the motivation, the conflict, and the story, while the art fills in all of the emotion, drama and urgency that’s needed to keep your attention.
My first thought when reading this was that it reminded me a lot of 100 Bullets, and I think that’s a fair comparison on some levels. While not as episodic, 120 Doses has some of that crime/noir vibe—a bit of that Sin City darkness. But it also gets kind of weird, which is what reminded me of Heavy Liquid, and even a touch of Aeon Flux.
If you’re looking for a new indie comic to get behind, this could be your lucky day. Get in on the ground floor and support one of your own, because I think this comic has legs.
Visit Comixology to pick up your copy today. Heck, for .99 cents, grab a dozen, and pass them out to your friends.
About the author
Richard Thomas is the award-winning author of seven books: three novels—Disintegration and Breaker (Penguin Random House Alibi), as well as Transubstantiate (Otherworld Publications); three short story collections—Staring into the Abyss (Kraken Press), Herniated Roots (Snubnose Press), and Tribulations (Cemetery Dance); and one novella in The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). With over 140 stories published, his credits include The Best Horror of the Year (Volume Eleven), Cemetery Dance (twice), Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders (Bram Stoker winner), PANK, storySouth, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad (numbers 2-4), and Shivers VI (with Stephen King and Peter Straub). He has won contests at ChiZine and One Buck Horror, has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, and has been long-listed for Best Horror of the Year six times. He was also the editor of four anthologies: The New Black and Exigencies (Dark House Press), The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press) and Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press) with Chuck Palahniuk. He has been nominated for the Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller awards. In his spare time he is a columnist at Lit Reactor and Editor-in-Chief at Gamut Magazine. His agent is Paula Munier at Talcott Notch. For more information visit www.whatdoesnotkillme.com.
