Review by Paul Steven Brown

"Book One: Blood Calls for Blood, Part One: The Monster of Greek Street"

Writer: Peter Milligan

Artist: Davide Gianfelice

Colorist: Patricia Mulvihill

Letterer: Clem Robins

Editors: Will Dennis & Mark Doyle

Published by DC Comics/Vertigo

I’ve got to hand it to DC Comic’s Vertigo imprint, they doing what they can to bring readers to their books. For the last few years, the company has been pricing the first volume of a series collected edition at $9.99. That usually works out at to $2.00 per issue and hard to pass up. Subsequent volumes tend to fall into the $14.99 price range, but once you’re hooked, and an obsessive compulsive comic book fan, it can be hard to not see a story to its completion.

Lately, Vertigo has begun to use this “cheap first taste” strategy on their new monthly titles. When the imprint released the first issue of Mike Carey’s The Unwritten a few months ago, it was priced at $1.00. Let me type that again: $1.00! Oh, and it had 40 pages instead of the standard 32. That’s hard to pass up if you are even mildly interested. Apparently it worked, because a second printing of The Unwritten #1 came out this week, but now at $1.99. The following issues are regularly priced at $2.99, but that budget busting first issue, will have done its job of getting more people than usual to at least take a peek.

Vertigo’s newest baby, Greek Street, is getting a similar launch: 40 pages for only $1.00. It’s got a compelling concept, too, and that never hurts. Writer Peter Milligan (no stranger to the Vertigo line – see Shade the Changing Man), has decided to recast the characters and plots of ancient Greek tragedies in the clothes of street level mobsters and hooligans. It works because those old stories by Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all lend themselves to tragedy and shine the light on the dark areas of the human soul.

This book if for mature audiences and I can’t stress that enough. The role of a chorus is performed by very naked strippers throughout the issue. If you know anything about Oedipus, then you already know what unfortunate and shocking fate awaits the character of Eddie. Plus with any hardboiled story involving gangster and criminals, there’s a substantial amount of violence. Still, all this mayhem is perfectly suited for ancient Greek tragedies.

Davide Gianfelice’s art is perfectly suited for the material. It has a very urban feel and would sit nicely next to the styles of Howard Chaykin, Rick Leonardi, Eduardo Risso, and Frank Miller’s pencil work. His characters are very dramatic, but given the source material, this is very understandable. Patricia Mulvihill’s color pallete is fairly dark and muted, but it adds to the raw, gritty vibe of the book.

Greek Street #1 is a great start to what promises to be a dark and dramatic book. Milligan and Gianfelice get right in your face with the first page and you’ll feel a little sullied by the completion of the issue, but that’s part of the point. It’s not the modern spin that will leave you feeling grimy; it’s that “classic” and “revered” source material that will have its way with you. For a dollar, that’s a hell of a bargain for a wild reading experience.

Rating: 7 out of 10 (Above Average)