Black Bishop: A Shot At Love #1 is a comic created by Marcel Dupree & Gaurav Shrivastava with story by Guido Martinez. An ex-spy current mercenary has finally found love, but life starts to get in the way. Our leading lady is a woman named Kate, better known as the Black Bishop. Her main squeeze is a woman named Marisia who is by all accounts pretty average. The story starts with Black Bishop on a random mission but after that we get a closer look at the character herself. She also makes some plans that quickly go awry. There is a lot of action in this issue, gunplay, fisticuffs, explosions; you’ll be seeing all of that. This comic has good dialogue though it can get wordy very fast. Lots of mini info dumps. And Black Bishop has an internal monologue going on that can get a bit cheesy at times. This is a nice story about a girl and her girlfriend that answers the question: “What happens when an ex-spy falls in love?”

            Our story starts on the plains(or deserts) of Lebanon and we see the endless sand while also somewhat feeling the heat due to the way the light hits the characters and the sweat. This comic doesn’t have the thick glossy look of newer comics so the little details stand out more. This is a decently expressive comic. Black Bishop wears a mask when she’s working and we can’t glean that much emotion from her eyes other than anger. She does smile when not wearing it; she also gets very mad. The faces are nicely drawn but they might look a tad bit similar. There is also a slip up(I believe) by the art team where one character is clean-shaven on one page then bearded up on the next. Black Bishop wears skin-tight pants and a black hoodie with her midriff showing and some cleavage peeking; she goes for the all-black look for spy reasons I take it. This takes place in a world of superpowers and we get to see some in action and the way they are drawn is quite eerie. The action scenes are easy to follow, very loud, and have a good amount of surprises sprinkled in.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like women-led action tales involving superpowers and are also a fan of lesbian love stories this might be for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“Yeah…you wanted me to be on time.”

 

Digital Link(Free): https://nosleeppress.gumroad.com/l/jsplk

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/845090602/black-bishop-a-shot-at-love/description

Indiegogo Link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/black-bishop-a-shot-at-love/x/26236710#/

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 30

Violent Pages: 12, for 40% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 2, for 7% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 3

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 3

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 3

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”