“Yesterday’s” Comic> Black Salt: The Last Heroes Left #1

Still not as pushy as spam robocalls.

Black Salt: The Last Heroes Left #1

Ratti Entertainment Co (2009)

“The Origin”

SCREENPLAY: Owen Ratliff & Aries Carmona

ADAPTATION: Chad Boudreau

ARTIST: J.C. Grande

COLORIST: Santosh Kumar Rath

LETTERER: Ed Brison

In 1984 a Shaolin monk comes across a sect misusing the teaching of Shaolin but the sect’s master, Kali, attempts to stop him. The monk manages to drag himself to the temple, writing the villains name in his own blood before dying. Fast forward to today. Agents Sam Tharp and his partner, Agent Li (Huan Li according to extra research) are brought into a mission to stop an attack on a hospital. They’re only told why when one of the militia gets his hands on a vial of a very deadly virus. Tharp manages to kill one of them and gain one vial back, while the villains flee with the other one. The slain attacker is the son of the mastermind of this operation, Kali, and he plans to go after Tharp’s family before continuing his plans with the virus.

What they got right: There’s a lot of action in this story, but also introduces us to Sam and Huan. The art is very good.

What they got wrong: I had to look up Li’s first name and I wasn’t sure the mastermind was also the villainous sect leader from earlier until I read more of the promotional text in the “back” of the comic.

What I think overall: This is a rather ambitious project. According to the movie’s website this was planned to be a franchise with multiple movies, a kids’ TV show about Shaolin trainees, a video game, and this comic at the starting point. I found one movie, talk of a game demo (all I found was a game company of the same name), and a 30 minute proof of concept video from HBO but not available for streaming according to JustWatch. I did find the teaser below and a promotional YouTube channel, this miniseries finally getting issue #5 kickstarted in February of this year, and the first four issues on Drive Thru Comics, getting this issue when it was a freebie. I rather enjoyed this comic and wouldn’t mind seeing the rest of it if it exists or will at some point. This was a good opener.