Petrograd – Gelatt Phillip, Tyler Cook (Oni Press)
It’s not very often that I buy a book on the strength of a synopsis alone. But despite having not heard of either of Petrograd’s creators before, when it landed on Comixology three years after its initial release, the blurb caught my eye.
A spy thriller set at the cusp of the Russian Revolution, dealing with the assassination of the famously difficult-to-assassinate Rasputin? As I believe the internet meme goes: shut up and take my money.
Petrograd doesn’t fail to deliver on that promise. It’s like a John le Carré novel illustrated by Blankets’ Craig Thompson, taking advantage of my bottomless ignorance of historical fact to build a tense story around a well fleshed-out cast.
Establishing these characters, the atmosphere and the setting is a slow burn, though, meaning that the moment pictured above comes nearer the book’s halfway point than its beginning. Is it stupid to say I wish I hadn’t read the blurb for a book that I bought on the strength of its blurb? Probably.
