Time To Pay The Piper: Redneck #22

Perry and Evil come face-to-face in Mexico. No one gets out alive.

Bartlett’s dead. Like, really, really dead. Part of the process of restoring our favorite Texas uncle apparently involved brutally killing the dude in the last chapter.
In Redneck #22, Corrona claims the process will take a few days, but Barty’ll be good to go in, say, three days or so. Now the deed’s done (supposedly), Corrona’s ready to collect on that debt from JV. Except JV doesn’t exactly trust the dude, and he’s not quite ready to unleash hell on Earth just yet. Not without proof of the impending resurrection, anyway. 

Donny Cates opens up a ton of new doors with this chapter. There are a few different directions Redneck could go from here, and most of them have terrible consequences. For the Bowmans, for humanity, for Evil… If you go back just a few chapters, you’ll remember that JV is way more of a badass than he lets on. Once he gets past that mental block and ditches his moral code, this thing is gonna go all kinds of sideways.
Lisandro Estherren and Dee Cuniffe continue to kill on art. I’ve been on Redneck from the first chapter, and one of the things that keeps Redneck so engaging is the beautifully visceral aesthetic these two bring. 

Odd as it sounds, every chapter of Redneck gets darker and more twisted than the last. Loss and death and gore, sure, but there’s always been a sliver of hope that things would finally work out in the Bowmans’ favor. After the events of chapter 22, I’m not really seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The Bowmans are down, and Cates seems to love kicking them in the gut while they’re on the mat. Maybe someday they’ll find the peace they’ve been seeking. Today isn’t the one.

Redneck #22, Image Comics/Skybound Entertainment, released 24 July 2019. Written by Donny Cates, art by Lisandro Estherren, color by Dee Cunniffe, letters by Joe Sabino, logo/production design by Andres Juarez.