Django Unchained, No. 1.
By Quentin Tarantino. With Art by R.M. Guera with Jason Latour.
Vertigo/DC Comics.
32 pp. $3.99.

On a good day of comicbook reading, it all just comes together–the tone, the rhythm, the art, the story.  Vertigo once again shows the care it takes with its projects with this first issue. Knowing that Tarantino gave permission to use his entire, unedited script fills this undertaking with intrigue. Not only is it a way to get more bang for my buck, adaptation-wise, but it allows me to see his full vision in a way we won’t on-screen.

And filled with bangs it is, as slavery becomes freedom and freedom becomes two-gun employment. The price of freedom is bullets, and bounty hunting with no sympathy for the hunted inspires a sense of pleasure.  Call Tarantino an exploitation filmmaker; he won’t give a crap. If he’s exploiting my need to see, and want, the bloody revenge that’s coming, then so be it. Guera’s and Jason Latour’s lines are a little thin for my tastes; I wanted more background and atmosphere than they provided. (Maybe John Paul Leon can do the next Vertigo Western?) But, like the script, they up the dramatic ante beautifully.

This comicbook has me positively salivating for the movie, and for the next three Vertigo installments.