Comic Strip Review: Blood Orange Volume 1: National Secrets by Tim Avers & Paul Fricke
Constanze is a famous fashion model, actress and platinum-certified recording artist. These days she’s the spokesperson for i0, a top fashion house. She’s also got a taste for blood orange mimosas. However, there was a time when she wasn’t any of those things, and sometimes her past threatens to catch up.
That’s not top of mind as Cat Smith prepares for a fashion show and charity auction at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for children affected by the Fukushima disaster and her thirtieth birthday.
Nor is her past really a big issue yet for the Russian gangsters who are looking for a way to wrest control from its current owners and “ethical couture” branding to line their own pockets. Extorting one of the designers over gambling debts has turned into a dead end, so now they need a new angle.
Blood Orange is a webcomic hosted by New Day Noir, and they’ve just released the first volume of the print edition. It’s a short volume, so mostly set-up. We get the curated “faceplace” and “songspot” version of Cat’s rise to fame, and the connections she’s made to other famous friends. She borrows a cop’s horse to track down a purse snatcher and has a one night stand. Oh, and her lap dog Sergeant Beefheart gets some photoshoots, and may be important later.
In the B-plot the Russian gangsters dispose of their failed connection and plot their next steps.
It’s early days yet, so presumably these two plotlines will collide at some point.
The art is rather loose and sketchy, so a lot of the pretty women’s faces are indistinguishable by features; fortunately there’s relatively few important characters yet. There is at least some acknowledgment that women have different body types.
Content note: off-camera murder, extramarital sex, lots of fan-servicey pictures of women.
This could be very good, it could stagnate. Check out the webcomic, and if you want it to continue, maybe chip in by buying the book. Tentatively recommended to action movie fans, pending the more actiony bits.
