“To you, my friend inside is a newspaper clipping.  A hero as you said.  A two-dimensional, black-and-white representation of right and wrong.  But, to him – to us — we’re nothing but killers and there’s nothing romantic or heroic about it.  It’s not something you want to talk about or be congratulated for.”
“You are alive and someone else is not.  There’s no way you can possibly understand what that means, what that does to you.  There’s just who you were before and what you are after.”

Baggage and all, grizzled, haunted war hero Francis Carver moves steadily forward in the second issue of Carver: A Paris Story, but as we learn in 22 stark, intriguing pages, as Carver goes to meet his past, his past may be coming after him. 

Building on the gritty first issue that played so aptly on the themes of the light and darkness living in our souls, Issue #2 remains chillingly self-contained, focusing on a delicately tense and oddly moving meeting between Carver and the Woman from His Past . . .

. . .  until the meeting is interrupted in a most invasive way.

Creator Chris Hunt ably moves from the brightness of a ’20s Paris café to the shadows of a Belleau Wood WWI flashback with ease, using each to counterpoint the other. He isn’t afraid to dwell on the darkness there.  Despite having been primed for it early on, it still comes off as shockingly heavy and moving, as the openness of the past meets the claustrophobia of the present in jarring and disturbing ways.  Hunt continues to mine the noir genre and keeps coming up aces with his deft handling of the tale, always moving forward and always leaving you wanting more.

“Wait – Is that a gun?”
“Yep.  Look, I’m sorry but you’re gonna have to stop talking now.  I think you got dragged into some of my sh*t, here.  Whoever took your kid, did it to get at me, which means I am that man who can help you.”
“But, I first I have to get us out of here “

Verdict:        FOUR Interrupted Nostalgic Interludes out of FIVE