The Diary of The Stray Dogs: The Wounded #1 is a comic written by Nigel Lynch, illustrated by Juan Carlos Francisco, and colored by Edward King Bola. A couple security officers for an offshore company have a very eventful twenty-four hours. This is a cyberpunk comic with a strong dose of violence, drama, and mystery. The leading lady for this tale is Shani Belcourt, she works as a pilot for these specialized security forces but longs to return home to the Caribbean. He best friend is Alex Martinez, he accompanies her on these missions and is a fun-loving, down-for-whatever kind of guy. This pair will cross paths with Rossa, she’s a courier who likes to party and use the drug “Purple Ice”. The story begins with Shani and Alex finishing up a mission and heading out to a club called Bad Karma where they relax after a job well done. Meanwhile across town Rossa is being given a package to deliver which irritates her as she’d rather be out with her friends. This takes place on what appears to be a different planet with a cyberpunk look to it. The violence here is very bloody with gruesome and gory attacks. The pacing is steady and the tone is like that of a futuristic sci-fi flick. The intensity gets very high due to violence and danger. The dialogue is mostly conversational with quite a bit of narration from Shani and a few terms and words unique to this story. There aren’t any word-heavy pages here. This is an exciting debut issue that gives us a few interesting characters and it puts them in a story full of thrilling moments that’ll change them in different ways.

            The art here is drawn in a detailed, sometimes smooth, modern style with a strong focus on lighting and shading. The color palette is very wide with a lot red, blue, and yellow-based hues and a classic coloring style in some scenes. All the scenery here is of the concrete kind with this being a sci-fi/cyberpunk story so you’ll see a lot of skyscrapers and lit up buildings. The main locations are the club, an apartment, and a couple other specific places as well as the streets. The backgrounds tend to show the surroundings like the bright lights in the club or the city skyline with gradient colors being rare. The expression level here is a bit above average and the different looks help sell the words. Some of the main emotions are happiness, anger, confusion, rage, fear, and sadness. The faces have detail ranging from decent to good with the expressions they show coming across clearly pretty much all of the time. The violence here tends to involve guns and can get very bloody with some gruesome attacks leading to gore. The action scenes come in bursts with the right amount of panels to keep things flowing smoothly.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes, if this is up your alley.

“Would I like this?”

If you like thrilling cyberpunk stories starring a Black woman and a Hispanic man that features strong violence, drama, and some mysteriousness then this is for you.

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

R. Violence, gore, sexual situations.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“I think I’ll pass. Don’t like to mix mi vices.”

 

Purchase Link: https://www.indyplanet.com/the-diary-of-the-stray-dogs-1

Indiegogo Link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-diary-of-the-stray-dogs-the-wounded–2/x/26236710#/

 

***** I received this review copy for free. *****

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

Probably Contains Spoilers

*
*
*
*
*

Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 30

Violent Pages: 7, for 23% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 1, for 3% 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 – 4

“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 – 2

“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.”