3 out of 5

Certainly the precursor to Torres work on his Amigo line – cultural horror, manipulating cliches to breed interesting story developments – Drums is also not quite as fully realized as some of El’s later ideas, suffering from an unnecessary whodunnit element to what’s otherwise a pretty effective voodoo scare tale.

The setup is not dissimilar to the countless horror tales out there with a Santeria springboard, but an original premise has never exactly been Torres concern versus telling a well-considered story.  The buddy-cop routine of Drums – the stoic Irons and the chummy Poltz – serves this need well enough, the narrative dropping just enough development to flesh out the characters beyond plot point stand-ins and occult specialist Michelle Hernandez providing our well-researched hoodoo context for the seeming mass suicide the leads are investigating.  Still sounds generic?  Sure.  It’s forever raining, there are meaningful dreams, prophesy espousing old women, off-screen baddies and zombies.  You’ll have the ‘twist’ figured out well before it’s revealed, but again, the uniqueness of Torres’ work is that he proves capable of getting you into these standards, and he seems to do that by making things sound as natural as possible.  There was undoubtedly quite a bit of work done to get the rituals and dialogue believable, and it’s never directly slapping you from the page, rather worked in to the relatively organic way El lets his stories evolve.  Alas, plopping the 11th hour twist on top of this proves pointless: it doesn’t actually add anything to the creeping dread of black magic; the story would have been better suited to the approach Torres used in Roman Ritual, in which the threat was clear and the drama came from not knowing how to stop it.  This aspect rears its head at Drums’ conclusion, but we’ve had to sit through a big pile of “explain the plot” to get there, which only reinforces how wayward some of the required maneuverings were.

Visually, Raul Allen’s moody covers are a wonderful addition; Abe Hernando’s art is appropriately cinematic in terms of framing and pacing, but it’s hard to get a read on his work as it changes greatly under the hands of different colorists.  Issue 1, with Kwaichang Kraneo’s assists, it’s loose and dark and a little sloppy; it’s not at its best, but the mood is convincing.  Issue 2, though the best cover, has the worst interiors via Malaka Studio, who cleaned things up and use fairly flat colors, making the art much too cartoonish for the tone.  Thankfully, the series goes out on its highest note when Fran Gamboa’s etchy colors add an layer of grit atop the art.  The rain and gore look wonderfully dreadful in her (?) hands, and her blacks allow for clean linework on the figures with thick shadows, which is a good contrast for Hernando’s style.

Drums is a good puzzle piece in the impressive collection of horror titles Torres has written, but it’s better as a note of comparison to his superior work at his own Amigo studio.