Turf #1 (of 5)

Jonathan Ross & Tommy Lee Edwards

The new Image mini-series Turf is about New York City in the late 1920's, with the prohibition, gangsters and flappers that you'd expect to see during this era.  The only difference in this book is that there are vampires too, and during this time period, they want to rule the city, and begin to take out crimelords and their gangs to make that happen.  Also thrown in to the mix are aliens who have crashlanded who may want their own piece of the pie.  It's a very rich premise with lots of possibilities, so it's no wonder that it's already caught Hollywood's eye.  The story and its characters of goons and dames is pretty engrossing, and certainly captivated me throughout.  I can see the dense dialogue turning some people off however, as it is really quite verbose.  I didn't mind however.  The dialogue's great, with Ross and Edwards really painting a fully-realized corrupt world surrounding the turf wars.  This book is pretty bloody, as to be expected when vampires (at least the non-sparkly variety) are involved, and the art tends to be pretty dark.  Sometimes a bit too dark even, with characters bathed in shadows a little too often.  But the action is clear for the most part, and some pretty exciting stuff goes down in this first issue.  Aside from the war between the gangsters and trying to figure out who's bumping people off, the book also sheds some light on the vampire invaders themselves and their motivations.  I liked that this wasn't one of those first issues that was all set-up.  It very much threw readers into the throng, and I have a pretty good idea of what the rest of the book will look like.