Publisher: Mad Cave Studios
Writer: Ray Fawkes
Artwork: Antonio Fuso
Colourist: Emilio Lecce
Lettering: Dave Sharpe
Release Date: 15th May 2024

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1987. New Year’s Day in Leningrad. A suspected prostitute’s body is found murdered in the bitter cold, and a hungover and disdainful Detective Pavel Smirnoff wants absolutely no part of it (“call a garbage man.”) Instead, he foists the investigation onto his partner Boris Dimitrovich, a detective with a reputation for getting lost in the detail and who, as a result, has a less than stellar success record. However, Dimitrovich suspects that this seemingly random act of violence is actually connected to one of his plethora of unsolved cases, and it soon becomes apparent that this “open and shut case” is going to be anything but.

On sale now from Mad Cave Studios, Sanction is a bleak story set in a bleak time and place, and writer Ray Fawkes and artist Antonio Fuso do a great job of setting the scene during the course of this opening issue. We spend a lot of time here getting to know both Smirnoff and Dimitrovich and their polar opposite personalities, before digging a little deeper into the specifics of the case.  It’s a slow burning opening issue that focuses more on establishing the overall mood than the plot itself, although the closing pages ramp up things significantly as Dimitrovich’s investigations take things in a whole new direction.

Fuso is the perfect artistic choice to bring a gritty crime tale like this to the page, and his deceptively detailed style works wonders in bringing the cold streets of Russia to the life – not to mention the fatigued, worn down and slightly disillusioned cast of characters we meet in this first issue. Colourist Emilio Lecce also does a great job of capturing the freezing bleakness of Leningrad in the winter, using a muted palette of pale blues for the exterior scenes and a soft, slightly warmer brown for those set inside.

As I mentioned, the final pages seem to confirm Dimitrovich’s initial suspicions that something more sinister is afoot, and it’s difficult to imagine a reader not becoming well and truly drawn into this tangled web by the end of the issue. A triumph of scene setting featuring a pair of intriguing lead characters, Sanction is the Soviet-era crime comic we’ve all been waiting for.

Rating: 4/5.

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[UNLETTERED PREVIEW ARTWORK – CLICK TO ENLARGE]

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The writer of this piece was: Craig Neilson-Adams (aka Ceej)
Article Archive: Ceej Says
You can follow Ceej on Twitter

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