Rory McConville will be a familiar name to 200AD readers, as he entered the ranks after winning their Thought Bubble con competition in 2015. Mainly a contributor of twist in the tale type stories and some Judge Dredd, he’s always been a reliable writer, so it’s great to see him on an original four part crime series via Image. Interestingly, artist Joe Palmer won the artists end of the same competition in the same year, though has only worked for 2000AD a couple of times (that I can find), interestingly on McConville’s first work, a Future Shock titled “Lifosuction”.

Anyway, that’s all in the past, and what we have today is the newly released collected edition of the pair’s four issue crime thriller “Write It In Blood”, which is not the jolliest title. It’s quite apprpriate, though, as there’s plenty of blood inside, though never at the expense of telling a good story. It concerns brothers Arthur and Cosmo, who work for one crime boss and have kidnapped another on his behalf. So far so good, but when it transpires that Arthur has been shagging the boss’ wife things take a turn for the worse and the pair find themselves infighting and trying to extracate themselves from a very tricky situation.

Plenty happens in the course of the four 30 page issues, but I don’t want to spoil it here. Most of the action is short and brutal, with plenty of dialogue and character building elsewhere. Palmer’s art is pretty basic but effective, nicely coloured by Chris O’Halloran. It’s McConvilles writing that really shines, though, as he delivers an easy read that is gripping throughout. The easy (and appropriate) comparison is to the Cohen Brothers, such is his knack with dialogue and the way he refrains from letting the story wander too far.

“Write It In Blood” is a great crime book, for those who like stuff like “Blood Simple” or “Breaking Bad”, a modern and easy to read about at two guys who are in a bad situation. They aren’t good guys, but you nonetheless can’t help but to root for them. Needless to say, this would make a great (and cheap) movie. Someone needs to get that sorted.

Easy to pick up from Amazon or your local comic shop now they’re open again (support them all you can), this one deserves to be read.