Dust to Dust

It’s the middle of the Great Depression and the town of New Hope, Oklahoma, isn’t living up to its name.  Stricken by drought, plagued by enormous dust storms, more people are leaving each day in the hope of finding a better place to live.  Sheriff Meadows isn’t one of them as he does his best to keep the peace as best an alcoholic war veteran who many believe to be indirectly responsible for the death of a little girl can do.  Yet he may wind up getting the chance to prove himself after one family that tried to leave town is found burned to death in their car.  Except New Hope is a town filled with suspects who have their own secrets that don’t have anything to do with this murder, but may be worth killing for.

Part of me knows that I can’t just stick to reading comics from creators that I actively like.  I’m not going to find the next Kieron Gillen, Jonathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker, Al Ewing, or Kelly Thompson if I only stick to reading just them.  So there’s a part of me that’s always willing to check out the latest indie genre piece to come from Image even if it’s not from an established creator.  “Dust to Dust” is from a creator who’s best known for his interior and cover work, J.G. Jones, and co-written by total unknown Phil Bram.  While there’s no doubt that Jones can draw, the question is whether or not he and Bram can write.

If this eight-issue miniseries is anything to go by then the answer to that is OH GOD NO!  “Dust to Dust” may have attractive art with panels that look like they came out of a photograph from the era, but its storytelling is sooooooo slooooooow and boring.  That murder which kick-starts the plot?  Doesn’t happen until issue #3.  In the meantime, we just wander around with Sheriff Meadows and the rest of the dull inhabitants of New Hope waiting for something interesting to happen in their lives.  Even after the murder happens, we still get to keep waiting.

You get the feeling that Jones and Bram felt they were using all this time to sketch out the lives of the town’s inhabitants so that the reader would care about them when their lives were in danger.  The problem is that, time and place aside, neither writer can come up with anything interesting for their cast to say or do – even when the killings start up again.  This all leads to a very rushed climax which reads like “Dust to Dust” was meant to be a twelve-issue series, but its creators had to hack it down to eight after the sales numbers came in.  What we got is such that I just think four more issues would’ve prolonged the boredom, which ultimately means that  someone braver than me can see if the next Jones/Bram joint is actually worth reading.