From Winter City Productions, Carl Purcell, Patrick Purcell, Pablo Verdugo Munoz, David Aravena Riquelme.

Our friends at Winter City Productions are back with an all new issue of their hit series Winter City.  For those of you who may just now be joining the series, lets get you caught up.  The series follows young Sam Winters in the past.  His uncle is a true believer in strength through pain, and Sam isn’t having the best of lives.  In the present the Grim Reaper is killing those who have wronged him and wronged his city.  He very violently removes these villains from the mortal plane, but are his means just as wrong?

Winter City continues to grow and become much more than anyone initially thought.  The story is deeper, the art is richer and the amount of time it sticks in your head increases with each issue. I read this issue two hours ago and I’m still debating some of the points.  Some of the greatest stories seem to be just violent or just foul on the surface only to reveal a greater truth beneath.  Winter City is not about an uber violent anti hero.  It is an exploration of that entire idea and what it means.

I’ve enjoyed reading this title to the almost half way point because the growth of the creative team is inspiring.  The writing leaves readers debating whether the Reaper is a greater evil than the evils he tries to end.  The backstory is everything it should be, a device to expand and explain the motivations behind the characters.  Not a framing sequence, not to just play with story and try to flex some writing muscles.  Every bit of it is there for a reason and its always more fun to read pages that matter.  Not a bit of this book is filler.

Every bit of art on the page helps this enjoyment.  Many reviewers compared issue one to other titles but that cant be done anymore.  The angles, the pacing, the panel tricks are all a pleasure to read.  The lettering and coloring adds so much to this title.  So many smaller books skip over this and feel that just the writing and pencils are enough.  While that is needed, comics are only whole with an entire creative team and Winter City delivers.

Come for the violence, but stay for one hell of an engrossing story.