Any reservations I may have had about ‘Shutter’ have been completely wiped away with this action-packed issue.
In this issue, we are finally introduced to what maybe the main antagonist: Kate and Christopher’s older sister (well, we sort of knew this before, but now we see her face). She’s also so evil that apparently she has slave labor to do simple things like hold up a phone to her ear. We are also introduced to anthropomorphized lion and fox who are a pair of killers that are given orders to bring Kate and her newfound little brother back alive.
Too bad Kate had already planned for such an eventuality, and lures her attackers into a trap so she can find out who is behind all of it. Too bad, again, that she is just as much a killer as they are.
I don’t think I have ever been more depressed about two characters that have only really had a few pages dedicated to them. What’s worse, they were murdering jerks who took out a whole record store of innocent people because they didn’t want any witnesses. They were awful and evil, and yet there was something about the lion half of the duo of stone cold killers that was sad. All he wanted was an original printing of an Aimee Mann vinyl, and he ends up with a belly full of shotgun shell at the hands of a child (Christopher). The sadness when the fox half of the pair when she realizes his death before she meets her own is far too poignant for a character I only just met.
Death in this series, I’ve noticed, is a hard thing to stomach. It’s not romanticized, and the action scenes are thrilling, but gut-wrenching. They are violent and do not sugar-coat the brutality of the life Kate and the antagonists live. For me, while I appreciate the realism in a fantastical world, it makes it hard to read… which only goes to show how well the writing and the art combine to get under the reader’s skin.
With every issue I read of this series, the more I am convinced that this should be on everybody’s pull list.
SHUTTER #6
Written by Joe Keating
Art by Leila Del Luca
