For this review I decided to go outside of my typical comfort zones genres and sink my teeth into something I don’t usually find appealing in comics, crime stories. It’s a bit ironic as I like this sort of thing in other media like movies and tv but in comics form I generally avoid it.
Like any good pulp noir a dame is at the root of this story and in this tale we get the point of view of two particular men. One is a sad sack of a private eye named Dan Farraday while the other is a teenager named Ricky. Both find a source of misery in their life is a certain feme fatal named Jane.
The perspectives of both of these men couldn’t be more different. Dan is on the hunt for Jane, I don’t know why as I’m jumping into this book cold, but the detective (if he actually is one, like I said I’m in this with no outside info) seems to be burdened by a number of issues. He starts his search professionally enough, but when he gets nowhere he slips into alcoholism and despair rather quickly. Dan seems to have an oddly emotional attatchment to this woman and even fantasizes about rescuing her from the “savage”“ of a man she’s with named Teeg. Dan is possibly the worst PI I’ve seen in the genre, with none of the attributes of your typical gumshoe. He’s not tough or smart, he’s got a bit of street savy but is sadly good at findinf trouble for himself. For a hero he’s a real underfog but this plays as being far more realistic than say a Mike Hammer likely is. Not every provate dick is gonna be a tough ex-cop or soldier, etc. Some are just going to be average guys doing a job, or even less than average.
Ricky’s dad is the aforementioned Teeg who is running with Jane. There some criminal enterprise at work here that the boy is unaware of. His main concern is hoping to receive a letter from his brother who was forced into military service for boosting cars. Ricky’s only meaningful conection is too his brother though he thought he had found one in Jane, proving that like all good feme fatals she is a master manipulator and its clear that she holds sway over Teeg and not the other way around. Brubaker takes the normal sense of isolation, alienation and rebelion that most teens go through and cranks it up to eleven with Ricky given the criminal life his family is involved in which is complicated by te loss of his brother and the shift in power dynamic with the inclusion of Jane. You can’t help but feel sorry for the boy in his helplessness as he desperately wants to cling to what family he has even if they are terrible people.
ART
Don’t expect Jim Lee here, no capes to be found in the gritty world of crime comics. The artwork is appropiately rough for a story filled with sloven, broken characters and seedy setting. It is however crisp in its story telling and makes nice use of spotting black to achieve the feeling of a noir series. Characters are rendered in all their realistic and unidealised imperfection making them as believably drab as the setting they exist in.
The colors are mostly flat, eshewing complex digital technique in favor of moody set pieces or garish spashes to accentuate either location, mood or action on the page. Its harsh on purpose and it works.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If you are a fan of noir or crime comics in general I think you will find a lot to like with this series. Don’t except heroes or honor though, this is much more akin to films like Bar Fly than The Maltese Falcon or Chinatown.
SCORE: 5 out of 5
Writer:Â Ed Brubaker
Art:Â Sean Phillips
Colors:Â Jacob Phillips
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