Exclusive Image Preview: Attraction Turns Fatal in Frank J. Barbiere & Victor Santos’ Violent Love

Crime comics have grown few and far between over the decades since their genre dominance peaked during the days of publishers like EC and Warren, but the few that hold firm on the shelves—Stray Bullets, the work of Brubaker and Phillips, recent stand-out The Violent—leave their blood-soaked mark on readers hungry for an alternative to capes-and-cowls showdowns. Frank J. Barbiere and Victor Santos, who last worked together on the subversive superhero-surgery miniseries Black Market for BOOM! Studios, are the latest to cock and load their revolvers with Violent Love, a bullet-riddled doomed romance in the vein of Bonnie and Clyde.

Set in the late ‘60s with a framing sequence in the ‘80s, this comic introduces Daisy Jane and Rock Bradley, an outlaw couple who shared a “violent love that damn near consumed everything in its wake.” The first issue, due out November 8th, kicks off with an eight-page prologue that introduces the near-mythic ill-fated lovers, and Paste has the exclusive first look below. Check back later this month for an in-depth chat with Barbiere to learn more about Daisy, Rock and the hammer-toting gangster who will forever ruin the innocence of home improvement.

Violent Love #1 Interior Art by Victor Santos