Review: Freelance Blues issues 3 & 4
FREELANCE BLUES
by Ian Daffern and Mike Leone. Art by Vicki Tierney
Issue 3 – 26pg; Issue 4 – 26pg
Available at freelanceblues.com
You get up, you go to work. You expect little change, and if one or two interesting things happen, it makes your day exciting, or terrible, or perfect. For Lance, the monster-fighting everyman at the heart of Freelance Blues, fighting terrifying monsters is the routine, and having expectations shattered is somewhat the norm. For a book series that is rapidly approaching its conclusion, I began to wonder before cracking open Issue 3 how many more surprises Daffern and Leone had up their sleeves.
Where we last left Lance Bunkman he was on his way across the country to be with his grandfather and two sisters, whom he supports with a string of low-pay freelance jobs that invariably end with him fighting some giant insect, or yeti, or zombie, or army of bewitched garden gnomes, or… well, you get the idea. The character is a little tired, and hurt, but there’s a heart behind every conversation he makes to the girls back home and you never question what brings him to get back to work the next day. Lance is as likable as ever, and Daffern and Leone have hit their stride in writing his bizarre circumstances as though they were the most normal in the world.
What didn’t strike me in my first review and hits me broadly in the face now is just how much these two guys can get done in 26 pages. They’ve boiled the Freelance Blues story machine to such a degree of acceptable lunacy that they can get away with launching right in to stranger and stranger encounters almost immediately, and still have time to flesh out the personal relationships between Lance and his twin sisters.
I want to say that Issue 3 offers the least interesting monster encounter to date, but I can’t fault the guys for a seemingly bottomless reservoir of originality. As issues of FLB continue, I’m sure they’ll eventually hit some classic-horror cliche that maybe doesn’t please everyone, but each iteration is always presented within a hilarious and original enough framework that shows that these guys really know their way around a monster story. Issue 4 makes up for any lapse of interest for this reviewer by exploring the monstrous possibilities of a Kobe beef ranch that lets patrons “experience the life of a cow.” Yeah, just let that one take you.
Vicki Tierney’s art is on point as always, offering some of the most exciting multi-panel work I have ever seen in an independent comic. In these issues we get to see more of Lance’s family and his trademark sneer and jawline shows its lineage, giving me a sense that Vicki is no mere hired gun, and she cares enough about her panels to fine-tune every expression.
The shining moments of FLB3 &4 are the brief-but-beautiful interactions Lance has with his sisters in phone conversations cut short, or looking at maps of jobs they have plotted out for him all across the continental U.S.A., bringing the relationship to such genuine and sweet focus that I can’t help but think “what a nice thing for them to do.” A monologue mid-issue 4 that wedges all of Bunkman’s job-hate into an just-ill-fitting-enough-to-be-charming Hamlet homage reminds us that the guy is not just family-oriented, and has enough personal layers that the fact that he keeps on these job quests is a stronger testament to his character than any narrator could have offered.
My only moment of fatigue happened in between FLB3 & 4, when I realized that a pre-determined list of part time jobs could lead to a lot of episodic repetition. Lance’s sudden appearance on a cattle farm made me lose touch for only a moment, as I was hoping for more of the driving, more of the phone calls, the in-between stuff that really shines.
While it would be a crime for FLB to become a series of one-issue monster gags, the labels on the front page remind me constantly that Daffern and Leone know what they’re doing. Each of these is an issue of 6, and every step brings us a little closer to understanding what it is that forces Lance to always be employed by the forces of evil (a mystery the twins start exploring that really got me excited). While the tone of this review may seem a little middle-ground, you must remember that I can’t look at FLB as stand-alone books anymore, because it is definitely a book that will standout as a strong, complete work when it is finished, with each page keeping you feeling anything but routine.