Aprendiz #4
This is one series that I had given up on completely. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it and had no problems with quality, it’s just that the last issue came out 4 years ago, and this was only ever meant to be the story of his first year as a tattoo apprentice. Well, I knew what this was as soon as I saw the envelope in the mail, and good for him for at least seeing this through. This finishes off the tale of his first year, avoiding any kind of a happy ending and instead going with reality. Adam gradually starts doing more and more complex tattoos, under the “watchful” eyes of the two store owners. The trouble is that one of them is too watchful (often jumping in and taking over at the first sign of trouble but rarely teaching anything in the process) while the other merely shrugs when things go wrong but it happy to tell Adam after the fact that he knew exactly how to fix the problem all along. Adam was also making a pittance this whole time, starting with %20 of the sale, eventually moving up to %30 and getting to %40 by the end of the year. There was also a creative breakup between the owners, as one of them gave up ownership and became substantially less helpful. Still, at the end of all this Adam found himself the low man on the totem pole, without enough experience to be anything but last in line when new customers came in. Adam finished up with things exactly as they were at that point in his life: bleak. Luckily for the reader (in a way), this took 10 years to put out and Adam is nice enough to put all sorts of updates in the back of the book. We hear from both of the previous store owners, we learn that Adam is doing quite well these days (at least in part due to exposure from the comics), and we get to see a few amazing examples of what is now his “thing”: cityscape tattoos of various sizes. It looks like this is it for Adam as far as comics goes, as the man works with his hands all day long so it takes him forever to put one of these issues out. It’s damned shame, as he’s pretty good at this stuff, but I can see where he’d want to go with his first passion. I still think this is more than good enough for a graphic novel collection, possibly with a progression of his tattoos over the years if possible to showcase his improving skills. The first two issues of this are still available in my online store, and I’ll throw in a copy of #3 with the first person who orders the pair, as Adam sent along an extra copy of #3 with this one for some reason. $3.95
