The Violent: Blood Like Tar, Issue #4 starts with Mason, a hacksaw, and a body in the bathtub. He needs to hack up the body so he can dispose of it, but he just can't go through with it. Dylan. His name was Dylan, and all he did was be in the wrong place in the wrong time. He paid with his life. When Dylan's soon-to-be-ex-wife comes along, there's more trouble. Mason gets rid of her, but she comes back and finds Dylan's body.
The story definitely is wrapping up, and it will end with Issue #5 before hopefully finding a second life both in trade paperback and with Issue #6, on a new publisher. I'll definitely follow The Violent to a future publisher when and if it finds one. I love the hyper-realism. I love how I knew this was the end of the line for Mason before I read the announcement that if Issue #6 comes along, it'll be set in 1986 and featuring a 13-year-old Jesse McPhearson.
The opening scene of this issue is my favorite, where Mason can't cut up the body no matter how hard he tries to be a badass. It's ubiquitous to see the nasty killer never emotionally hurt by his own actions, the psychopath, the assassin. So rarely do we see, like in The Green Mile, the convicted child killer afraid of the dark. I also like the use of black tar heroin in the previous issues, tying in with the title of the arc. The Northwest Coast is full of the junk. On the East Coast, it's all pain pills sometimes leading to white-powder heroin, but in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, the powder is dark and sometimes even tar-like. Take too much, and you'll end up dead.
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