3 out of 5

Picked up at my LCS as a freebie, this is a slickly produced, pretty solid indie work. The content definitely shows promising intentions, but I’m not sure what’s actually in the panels and pages sells us on a hook for the story; somewhere between that and the backmatter (character bios, some process stuff) you can probably get an idea if you want to hunt down further issues or not, but I’d maybe argue that some more of that needs to be put into the Comic Book parts, with flavor in the backmatter – not the other way around. You’re otherwise asking / requiring a reader to go cover to cover and fight a little bit to find the book’s possible story and direction, and in a crowded comic landscape, maybe that’s a tall-ish order. And even with that accepted, I’m not positive I can tell you what A Prayer for the Hunted will ultimately be about. In part because writer Justin Eugene Evans is being purposefully cagey, but based on the way this is written, I also think this might be an example of a writer writing a bit too “cinematically” – the story is in their head, and they assume the reader is as interested in they are in hearing it.

I know that’s a lot of negativity up front, but I do want to return to how well produced this thing is, and that that’s not just all flash. While I might just have knocked Evans writing a bit, it’s an indirect knock: their dialogue and the pacing is really well handled, putting us right into a classic conspiracy thriller, while straying from going too tropey with the bitter government agent, and the doubting journalist, and the stoic spy – they each are archetypes, but speak with a sense of personality fueling those archetypes. And – thank goodness – Evans isn’t loading up on swears. I’ve no problem with blue language, but every era of “mature” books still seems to think that adding extra fucks and whatnot makes something more serious, and it’s often just not needed. There are plenty of fucks here, but they feel right in the context; I can hear these characters speaking.

So: we have a spy wanting in from the cold, and the government agent promising him that’ll happen… eventually, and the journalist our spy is feeding info to to maybe speed that process along. And the supposed hook (where some nefarious stuff will go down, as alluded to in an afterword) is having the spy and journo meet up at an abandoned goldmine, for some big government-secret reveals.

My sense here is that we’re trying to tap into a modern day (or evergreen) feeling of doubt in our government, bundled in a noir and shot as a 70s conspiracy flick. Ariel Orea’s black and white art has a Jacen Burrows compactness to it, but Orea’s not as widescreen – an ironic term, here, because Orea is much more cinematic, and if I used that descriptor critically before, it’s good that artist and writer are at least aligned, and maybe more importantly: the art looks amazing, and the high production appreciably not over-glossy) really brings out the duotone look. It’s notable that Evans did the storyboards – that would make sense for how well this is paced and “shot” to work with the dialogue; this is essentially all talking for a few pages, but it moves along perfectly, and immersively. Were I to name a quibble with the art, it’s something that becomes especially apparent in the character bios: all of Orea’s character models are exactly the same, just with different hair / facial hair. It’s definitely less noticeable in the artwork, but that might become tiresome if the cast is just limited to these players.

As a preview, I have my complaints, which overlap with how this maybe functions as a comic book in general. But: this is also quite ahead of a lot of indie projects in terms of confidence and presentation, and both of those are maybe enough of a selling point to encourage keeping an eye on this project.