Crickets Color Special #1 (2022) pg.15

This page is from The Blood of the Virgin interlude that originally appeared in Kramers Ergot #10, was then published on it's own as Crickets Color Special #1 in an oversized format, and will be in the upcoming Blood of the Virgin book being published by Pantheon in May of 2023.

This page, for me, is just about as good as cartooning gets. A 20 panel grid detailing a film crew fleeing from set when someone notices the cops are coming. The action goes fast detailing Joe and Bert running over hills, roads, backyards and eventually landing in an orange grove where the action stops and Harkham slows it down to show an amazing moment of Joe taking down an orange and passing it to Bert to eat, us witnessing maybe the last moment of their friendship before Joe finds out Bert has double crossed him.

While this story is a flashback to old Hollywood and doesn't involve the main cast, it still connects to the Blood of the Virgin story (serialized in Crickets) proper in situations, page structure and theme. One example of the former is in Crickets #6 where Seymour's film set is disrupted when someone tells the set the cops are coming and they have to flee the location. As for the panel construction it's incredible that in Crickets #4 he goes on a tear and produces an 11 page run of 20 panel pages having to deal with shooting the film within the comic "Blood of the Virgin" on location, however on this page he uses the 20 panels not to show a montage of all these different things that happen in a day of shooting a movie but an action sequence taking place over a minute or so ending with subtle wonderfully observed moment between the two main characters.


Pencil, ink and white out on bristol board.

14 1/2" x 18 1/2"