Bog Bodies Review (Declan Shalvey, Gavin Fullerton)

Young Killian’s fucked up a hit so bad he’s gotta be taken out to the bogs outside Dublin to be executed by his fellow gangsters - no loose ends. Except he somehow escapes and so begins a chase through the night involving gangsters, a runaway kid and a house full of ghosts - who’ll make it to the dawn?

Not bad! I had no expectations for this one and knew nothing about Bog Bodies and sometimes that’s the best way to go into a book. It’s nowhere close to being what I’d consider to be a good ‘un but it’s also definitely not bad.

Why didn’t the gangster in the boot immediately shoot Killian? Because then there’d be no story, which is as contrived a storytelling choice as you can get. Neev the runaway girl was a totally underdeveloped and irrelevant character - she was just there to be talked at by Killian; she added nothing to the story.

But I liked that the story took place over the course of a night in the middle of nowhere with very few characters - it gave it a sense of urgency and reality and it was the better for it. I enjoyed the complexity of Keano’s character - an over-the-hill gangster who’s sick of killing and isn’t totally rotten like Gerry. The house of ghosts was an interesting supernatural aspect to the otherwise realistic story, though, like Neev, it was pointless.

I haven’t read enough of Declan Shalvey’s writing at this point (I’ve only read his Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan before and that was awful!) to know where he was taking the story, so the finale was unpredictable and surprising. And kudos to Shalvey for choosing the only sensible ending the story could’ve had. And yet - that hard realism gave it an anticlimactic, slightly dissatisfying air. Not that I would’ve preferred a happy ending but perhaps a more imaginative one.

I didn’t dislike Gavin Fullerton’s art, and he did the best he could with a constant night setting, but I feel like I would’ve enjoyed the book more if Shalvey himself had also drawn it - I like his art a lot more.

Still, Bog Bodies is a decent done-in-one crime thriller that tells a simple, straightforward story fairly well - not a bog-standard comic!