Dead Men Do Tell Tales In Bone Parish #4

Following a devastating loss at the hands of the cartel, the Winters family is in turmoil. To defeat their foes, they might have to break the cardinal rule of dealing: never get high on your own supply…

Well, that escalated quickly. Wade’s barbarous demise at the hands of the cartel in chapter three puts the Winters on their heels, but the tide’s about to turn in Bone Parish #4. There are a few things about Ash that the gangsters and crooked cops apparently overlooked when getting into bed with the Winters. Yeah, the drug offers the ultimate escapist experience, but there’s a whole other side to this coin. You can’t just leave corpses laying around. Dead men do, in fact, tell tales.

Cullen Bunn is well known for horror, but it’s the complex familiar relationships that sell this piece. The tension between siblings. The grieving materfamilias trying to move on but unable to let go of the shadow of her late husband. Mafia capos and cartel lugartenientes jockeying for position. All of it plays really well as necromantic family crime drama.

Bone Parish’ art is ridiculous. Jonas Scharf and Alex Guimaraes provide an increasingly ominous aesthetic for an increasingly ominous script. Chapter four goes down some deep, dark holes and the art team strikes an amazing balance between the gritty reality of the seedy underbelly of New Orleans and the hyper saturation of weaponized Ash trips.

Bone Parish is a brilliant blend of horror, crime procedural, gangster tropes, and family drama. It’s hideous and beautiful, mean and emotional. It’s a story about family, in the best and worst possible ways.

Bone Parish #4, published by Boom! Studios, released 31 October 2018. Written by Cullen Bunn, illustrated by Jonas Scharf, color by Alex Guimaraes, letters by Ed Dukeshire, cover by Lee Garbett, unlocked retailer variant cover by Tyler Crook.