Holy hell, Vertigo is back. I wanted to believe it, but I was apprehensive. When the volley of first issues released, I devoured them, I enjoyed them, but I still wasn’t ready to believe. Now that I’ve read Bleeding Hearts #2, I’m so happy to report that I feel like a teenager again, reading a story I haven’t seen before, told in a way I didn’t expect, made by creators the way only they could.
Shifting from Poke’s perspective in issue #1, Bleeding Hearts #2 instead focuses on the life of the woman and her daughter, who we later learn is named Rabbit, and how they came to be rescued by Poke. We see her give birth to Rabbit, in love with Rabbit’s father, Solomon, and we briefly see her experience horrors that sound like they fell out of a grindhouse zombie movie like The Field of Mass Suicides and The Cannibal Commune.
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All the while she gives poignant narration about how a life like this feels a lot like death, but the joy of living is something that can’t be snuffed out by atrocities and nightmare situations. She thoughtfully explains that the human heart lies and the head is more reliable. All the while, talking to Rabbit, she exclusively tells the truth while leaving so much space for interpretation that it could easily be interpreted as a lie. She clearly loves her daughter, so of course the heart lies.
Deniz Camp made such a fun parallel between what said and what she did that it felt like you were wondering if she even realized she was doing it. The depth of her narration set against the harsh realities of the world around her made her seem like a poet in a place where worlds hold no meaning. The tragedy isn’t just the zombies, it’s that she’s alone, constantly reminding herself to not get attached to anyone, even other survivors she comes across. Her only job is caring for her daughter Rabbit, a person who can’t seem to stop making connections, even she shouldn’t.
That effortlessness is painstakingly brought to life by Stipan Morian, who seems to capture 1,000 details in every panel, and somehow even more when they break the structure of the page. One scene in particular details how the woman and Rabbit escaped from a horde of zombies that unfortunately got to someone close to them. As they race down stairs, a silhouette set against a minimalist interpretation of steps that bleeds into two more shots as they get closer to the reader and are horrified by the sounds they hear.
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It feels like letterers and colorists don’t often get the credit they deserve, but I especially wanted to shout them out for this issue. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou made it so every sound effect felt like it was ringing in my ears. The previously mentioned staircase example was hauntingly done, and the very next page as Poke moved slowly through a school’s gymnasium, the narration box was set on the back of a backboard. That sounds simple, and I guess it is, but it’s something that stuck out as odd and unusual and contributed to the strangeness of this world in its own small, meaningful way.
Matt Hollingsworth’s colors bring so much to the atmosphere of the story being told here. The muted and matte balance of cold and warm colors help encourage the story of dualities at play. Head and heart, life and death, trust and protection, it’s all wrapped in shades that help you feel the story while the rest of the book help tells it.
First issues are hard to do. A final page reveal is sometimes more than enough to get audiences to come back the next month, but how do you keep momentum going when the twist is revealed? Bleeding Hearts #2 is nothing like its first issue yet somehow might be even more ambitious while telling a, technically, more grounded story that’s completely engrossing and gorgeously rendered by a creative team operating at the peak of their powers.
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