Sometimes books need a couple issues to grow on me. That was definitely the case with Bloodhound, because while I was kind of lukewarm on issue one, having read the first two issues together, I can see the appeal of what Jolley and company are up to here. Their lead character, Travis Clevenger, is just a touch too cartoonish badass instead of real badass for me, especially since Jolley has compared Clevenger to legitimate badass Vic Mackey from The Shield, but he's slowly steering in the right direction, and as we start to get more puzzle pieces that reveal more about Clevenger's past, I find myself more and more intrigued by what's going on in his future.
Bloodhound gets points from me for a couple things. One is that it introduces a new character into the DC Universe, and I'm all for some new blood being pumped into both of the big shared universe concepts. Another is that it features a pretty neat premise that is easily explained but has all sorts of room for exploration. In a nutshell, Travis Clevenger is a dangerous former cop who went to prison for corruption and murdering his partner, but he's been let out by the FBI to do what he does best, which is track down and stop metahuman criminals, even though he has no powers of his own. That's just the surface, as there's plenty more going on with the character, but it's a pretty solid central concept.
Where the book really grabbed me was in the tail end of issue two, when Clevenger visits the widow and kids of his partner, the one he killed. It had already been pretty clearly indicated that Clevenger didn't just murder his partner, that there were some extenuating circumstances, but when we see that there's a romantic link between Clevenger and his ex-partner's wife, and that one of the kids might actually be his, well, things get really interesting. It's also worth noting that Jolley and Kirk sell these relationships pretty subtly, with a couple of moments that are pointed out only because of Clevenger's perceptive FBI liaison and a pause in the dialogue that gives away a lot.
If only such subtlety were to be found in Clevenger's tough guy behavior. Jolley comes up with some pretty effective shockers, such as how Clevenger deals with a prison riot, but he undercuts them by having Clevenger refer to them and basically having him be too aware of how dangerous he is. A certain level of knowing he's tough is good, but he verges on bad '80s action movie cliche at times. It's not that I don't enjoy seeing him use a sink out the window or coming down like a ton of bricks on some villains, but for a guy without any metahuman powers, he's coming across as almost cartoonishly tough. More Sylvester Stallone than Michael Chiklis, and I'm a far bigger fan of the latter.
Jolley's story is matched by some very strong art from Leonard Kirk and Robin Riggs. Kirk, a longtime veteran of superhero books, has always brought a realistic, Neal Adams-esque style to the work, and thus his style is very suited to the real world of Travis Clevenger. Travis himself is immense, tall and muscular, but within realistic proportions, towering over the other characters but retaining a semblance of reality as well. He's surrounded by some beautifully rendered scenery and supporting cast, and while Kirk's work is a different type of realistic than, say, Alex Maleev or Michael Lark, it fits the book pretty well. I find it interesting (though not entirely bad) that for such a hard-edged book, Riggs is giving the book something of a soft focus, with the end result being a look that is something like the work of Butch Guice or Greg Land over at Crossgen.
