A Review: SIDESHOWS

The Fellowship was fortunate enough to obtain a copy of SIDESHOWS from Arcana Comics. Erik Hendrix writes, and Michael David Nelsen gets the art credit.

The premise: mob-operated Vegas in its heyday. Inject some carnies as hired muscle for one of the casinos. And let’s make it interesting—we’ll give the carnies the super powers they need to pull off their acts.

As improbable as this sounds, I think it works well. The story portrays a mafia skirmish which feels as though it could have been pulled from 1930s Chicago. Characters are introduced pretty effectively, and for the most part the rest of it is violence (which is very fitting of the mob genre, of course).

The art is very fitting to the genre too, though I’d have liked it to be a little more crisp; some of the fight scenes could have been drawn grittier. Overall, though, I think the art works. It helps to draw out the noir feel from the mob-dominated setting. So overall I like this book. The inside cover bills it as “Book One” so I’m interested in seeing what Book Two is about.

SIDESHOWS is available now at your FLCS or by order from arcana.com.

~Mike