No Mercy #4
Written by Alex De Campi
Art by Carla Speed McNeil
Colors by Jenn Manley Lee
Published by Image Comics
After a truly horrible night in the last issue, the main players in No Mercy see their situation as it is: bleak. Sitting in the middle of nowhere with nothing (substantial) to eat and no water to drink puts them on edge. The mostly silent Kira goes on a tirade against Gina, but Travis is there to help her through such an emotional event. He’s such a help that they decide to run into the wilderness by themselves. It’s almost too easy to write them off as coyote fodder. Hopefully, they’ll reappear as their polarities make them some extremely entertaining characters.
Elsewhere, Chad is fed up with waiting and recruits DeShawn and Tiffani to scale a mountain to get to the closest village. In typical No Mercy fashion, DeShawn falls and his future is questionable. Sr. Ines wakes up in a hospital and learns Anthony has left with her brother, Braulio. Luckily for Anthony he’s thrown right back into the wasteland with his fellow teens.
No Mercy #4 is another enjoyable read from Alex De Campi, who continues to show how eighteen year olds would act in this dire situation, and how they would become their own cliques by eschewing the greater good for their own personal goals. This is seen when Gina and Travis run away, when Tiffani just remembers she has a bag full of candy, and when Chad surreptitiously doesn’t volunteer to run to the closest village. De Campi is exploring the world of selfishness in this issue and no one is innocent. Even when the group should band together they’re fractured easily. An insult from Kira is all it takes for Gina to run away and for Travis to follow. The characters have gone from detached in the first issue to selfish in this issue. What happens in the future when they have to rely on each other once again?
Carla Speed McNeil and Jenn Manley Lee continue their art tour de force. McNeil wields her magic pencil wand around each and every page deploying the rugged red rocks background waylaid with candy and rotting corpses. Lee executes the accompanying colors flawlessly combining deft touch showing blood on the rock and a bloodless hospital room.
De Campi has said that this series will see the teens out of the wild, but whether that’s of their own volition or in body bags remains to be seen. No Mercy is sending out a multitude of sub-plots that will delight readers now and into the future.