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About Dead Men’s Laughter #1
Writer: Will O’Mullane
Artist: Marco Perugini
Colorist: Marco Perugini
Letterer: Jonathan Stevenson
Publisher: Independent
Genre: Horror/Neo-Noir
Kickstarter Launch Date: February 28th, 2025
Synopsis: Centred around the twilight days & hours of Harry and Russell - two elderly criminals, and one time best friends, brought together but simultaneously split apart by a crime committed in their youth…But that crime rears its ugly head once more, and threatens to destroy the lives they have built up for themselves.
Dead Men’s Laughter #1 Review
Dead Men’s Laughter #1 is a one-shot neo noir horror comic book about murder, crime, and mayhem. It follows two wannabe jewel thieves who break into a stash of riches but who are interrupted by two people who they ultimately kill so that they’re not caught. The past is prologue as this comic book tells the sequence of events from the perspective of one of the crooks who’s already experienced it.
What follows is a sequence of events which leads to someone who’s ultimately caught by the police but Im not going to spoil who. Let’s just say the two crooks at the start of this comic book are winning no friends in the industry of petty crime.
Dead Men’s Laughter #1 is a tad disjointed due to its haphazard sequence of storytelling. But it is a fun little ride, even if it will take a re-read for you to wrap your head around what just happened. There’s a little lost in the detail and it could’ve been fleshed out a bit for another 10 pages or so, giving opportunity to for moments of empathy and tension, but that’s hard to justify when the creators are clearly aiming for a short story on a budget.
There’s artwork that bleeds off the page in a surrealistic manner with bright hues juxtaposed against its many darker moments. Resulting in the formation of a crime story in similar vein to The Sopranos and Goodfellas. In this a memorable comic book one-shot? Only time will tell. I don’t hate it, I’m just not in love with it.
My Kind Of Weird Score:
7/10
Dead Man's Laughter #1 Preview Pages:
