Review – Deal Breaker #2 from Evoluzione Publishing, now funding on Kickstarter

Posted on May 19, 2022 in Kickstarters, Small Press Reviews

Publisher: Evoluzione Publishing
Writer(s): Marcel Dupree, Joshua Metzger
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Colourist: Marco Pagnotta
Letterer: Brant Fowler
Release Date: Currently funding on Kickstarter until 1st June 2022 (CLICK HERE)

Chapter 1: What would you do to get your perfect dream life? We all fantasise about it, but small town cop Jerry Boggs really doesn’t expect anything to happen when he throws a dime in the town fountain and makes his wish. Except it does. Jerry gets everything everything he ever dreamed of, success, power, money, a beautiful wife and a family. But everything has a price. When the text messages start arriving Jerry ignored them, but when his wife and children are kidnapped he is forced to settle his debts with a shadowy, sinister figure who wants payment in blood.

Chapter 2: Faced with an impossible decision, Jerry takes desperate measures, contacting an unsavoury face from the past, in the hope of stopping Voland in his tracks and rescuing his family. The plan however has disastrous results and Voland ups the ante, making Jerry’s fight to save his family much, much harder.

Okay, so like a lot of you, the first chapter of Deal Breaker completely passed me by, and truth be told, if my editor hadn’t asked me to take a look at chapter two, then this one would likely have passed me by as well. Usually I find a lot of great Kickstarter titles via word of mouth on Twitter but it seems like I’ve seen absolutely no marketing of this title, which is (if you’ll pardon the pun) criminal.

This is a really great story. It’s a tense, psychological, crime thriller and it also has a top notch demonic facet to the narrative with the antagonist, Voland being reminiscent of Stephen King’s Leland Gaunt (Needful Things) but with the brutal efficiency of Richard Straker (Salem’s Lot), or Joe Hill’s Charlie Manx (NOS4A2). He also reminds me of Bishop from Brubaker & Phillips’ Fatale.

To prepare for this review I obviously had to go and read both issues to catch up, and I was enjoying it so much I shot through both issues so quickly I had to go back and read them again. While crime/thrillers aren’t my go-to genre, there is something about this story that grabbed me and dragged me in right from the start.

Boggs certainly isn’t the most sympathetic of protagonists. I wouldn’t say that his incredible fortune and success had made him a more giving and empathetic human being, but he doesn’t need to be. Indeed, there was always something unsympathetic and unlikeable about about a lot of the old noir/thriller protagonists that I grew up with and it didn’t stop them being incredible characters.

Voland, as I have suggested above, oozes a sinister and brutal efficiency, he is an arch conspirator and seemingly untouchable, and there is no obvious way that Boggs could ever hope to defeat him, I mean we’re staring down the barrel of an Arlington Road/Dead Zone ending here, but which ever way it goes it’s going to be a fantastic conclusion.

There are two weeks left of this current Kickstarter campaign which I’m really hoping will be successful because I’m dying to see the full five issue run reaching print, and to find out what the creative team has in store for the final denouement.

Rating: 4/5.

[PREVIEW ARTWORK – CLICK TO ENLARGE]