The Lunatic, The Lover, & The Poet #2 is a comic written by Brian Hawkins with art by Marcio Loerzer and colors by Gabriel Roldan. Everyone is on edge after a second member of the cast is attacked. This is a horror drama comic with a bit of mystery that gets violent and has a main cast of primarily college students. There isn’t a lead here but these are the main players: Mercedez, the best friend of the first victim, Xylerpher, the writer for the play, Sierra, Xy’s cousin who found the first victim, and Detective Randolph, the uncle of the first victim. This story begins with an excerpt from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that has been edited with red ink. Afterwards we’ll see the brutal knife attack on Mercedez by a masked assailant. The violence here is very bloody with some gruesome attacks. The pacing here is steady and tone is that of a horror movie/show starring young people. There is palpable tension and some very high intensity moments. The dialogue is mainly conversational with a decent amount of back-and-forth. There are no word-heavy pages here. This is an issue that builds on the horror of the previous one while showing us the vastly different reactions of these characters to violent events.

            The art here is decently detailed in a modern style with heavy shading. The color range is realistic but not very wide as most are dark in tone which fits the atmosphere. The only scenery we see is a quick shot of the sky and some trees and bushes as most of this takes place indoors. The campus as a whole is the central location but scenes take place all over from the library to the dorms to the theater. The backgrounds more often show the surroundings but on occasion it’ll be gradient color background with optional shading. The expression level here is below-average as only two characters show real emotion. The range here consists of fear and terror with some anger as well. The faces have a decent amount of detail and the different expressions tend to come across clearly. The violence here involves knives and there some gruesome moments resulting in a lot of blood and light gore. The action scenes have a good amount of panels with an overall smooth flow.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like dramatic horror stories that star a bunch of college students and that features violence and mystery then this is for you.

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

R. Violence, blood, light gore.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“I dunno. It usually is the boyfriend.”

 

Digital Link: https://blaxtraumaprod.gumroad.com/l/Issue2Act2

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brianlouisiam/the-lunatic-the-lover-and-the-poet-issue-2-act-2/description

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

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 24

Violent Pages: 4, for 17% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 0, for 0% 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 – 2

“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 – 1

“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.”