The Work of Jesse Grillo in Bleeding Ink

On the heels of reviewing Sensory Distortion, I've had the opportunity to look at more of writer Jesse Grillo's work for Bleeding Ink.

Warzone reminds me a great deal of Jason Aaron's Scalped (and also sports clear echoes of Sensory Distortion), as veterans of the Afghanistan War found themselves back home and trying to make sense of their lives, which have degenerated into unfortunate relationships with drugs and those who provide them. The lead character is Johnny, who becomes charged with a mission of vengeance that puts him right back into, you guessed it, the warzone.

DemiGods, meanwhile, is a variation on the super-soldier story (you may be thinking of Captain America, but the closest analogy is actually the Jessica Alba TV show Dark Angel, or a more aggressive version of Fringe), in which Grillo explores the consequences of creating them en masse, creating a dystopian future in which mankind's only hope rests in the children of these misbegotten heroes, having inherited their parents abilities and raised in captivity, until they're freed by sympathizers and seek revenge.

Chapel is the most complex offering, with the first issue serving as a straight-up origin issue, both introducing the title character and his already-complicated relationship with the world around him, how he resents the robots struggling to be accepted as ordinary individuals in society, and his transformation into a cyborg following a disastrous confrontation that would otherwise have cost him his life. You can think of it as a twist between Blade Runner and I, Robot.

The art in Warzone features the same dynamic coloring presented in Sensory Distortion, while Chapel has an effective contrast in black and white. DemiGods is the least dynamic artistically. The more you read of Grillo, the more you can appreciate his ability to turn variations on a common theme. He is certainly an asset to the formative development of the Bleeding Ink studio, and an emerging talent of the comics scene.