World Comic Book Review

28th March 2024

Pretty Deadly #10 (review)

Pretty Deadly #10 (review)
(Image Comics, June 2016)
Writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick

A dark, strange comic which started as an infusion of American mysticism and the Western cowboy tradition, “Pretty Deadly” was as stark on the comics landscape as a hoodoo in the Sonora.

An example of this strangeness is the narrative. It is a conversation between a decomposing rabbit, shot in the head and its brains and skull exposed and twisted by the impact of the bullet, and a butterfly. The horror of the rabbit’s decaying appearance is juxtaposed with the gentle and patient dialogue. The two creatures ramble, Hemingway on a calm day, a whimsical lull punctuated by eerie horror and a crescendo of violence, and the rabbit disturbingly rots away during the course of the plot, whittled down to a ruined skeleton.

This title has been the subject of controversy. Yet commercially it has been extremely successful, a happy by-product of the quality and novelty of this work.

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