Daily Breakdowns 042 - Noir

Noir: A Collection of Crime Comics
Edited by Diana Schutz
Featuring Stories by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, Brian Azzarello & Moon/Ba, Rick Geary, Paul Grist, David Lapham, Jeff Lemire, Dean Motter and others.
Published by Dark Horse Comics. $12.95 USD

Schutz has been putting together anthologies for Dark Horse for years, and they've always been pretty good, Autobiographix having probably the best line-up of excellent cartoonists, even if the work contributed was not always up to standard (Matt Wagner walking readers through a recipe for chicken parmagiana, for instance). In fact, there is usually one head-scratching entry. I'd liked to say that now that I'm older, those things don't bother me as much, and sure, it's nice that the price of this book is the same or lower than similarly-sized anthologies from years ago, but...why is there a text story in "a collection of crime comics?!" It seems to be a Dark Horse anthology trademark, as the Scott Allie-edited horror anthologies do the same thing, but...aren't there enough people willing to do a a decent short comics story that you don't need to run a text story? The story in question here, Ken Lizzi's "Tru$tworthy," is really mannered and irritating, like someone trying really hard to read like old pulp fiction except it's modern, so there's more profanity, and a really off-putting set-up that throws away the chance at the reader buying into the author's world, for no good reason.

There's a good and salacious Brubaker/Phillips Criminal "emission" involving a femme fatale and a sucker. Brubaker knows his noir. that's a sleazy femme fatale noir. Also in the "existing property" category is "Open the Goddamn Box," a David Lapham Stray Bullets story featuring the teenaged Virginia Applejack, tough as nails but a ways off from Amy Racecarhood. Bonus points for the title being not only key to the story but a reference to a song by one of Lapham's favorite bands, The Fall. Paul Grist's Kane tale kind of fails as a police procedural, in that the case closes itself without the police doing much, but it's always nice to see his storytelling. Motter's Mr. X story is kind of like that as well--a nice way for old readers to peek in on a familiar world or character, though maybe a little lightweight for new readers. Also, maybe a more high-contrast approach would have worked better than the computer shading Motter utilizes here.

Jeff Lemire's "The Silo" isn't surprising, but the spare, rural setting and cool delivery help it stand out. Weeds writer and producer Chris Offutt makes what I believe is his comics debut with, "The Last Hit," a story about an aging assassin on the way out that displays enough with in the narration and dialogue to overcome the familiar beats. It helps that Kano and Stefano Gaudiano illustrate it, too. Rick Geary is sure no stranger to crime stories, but here he gets to make one up instead of creating another true crime, early 20th Century effort. It's kind of fun that it ends up being about a crime averted, or rather, diverted. M.K. Perker's, "The Albanian," is intriguing, about an office worker gone nuts, so that may hit closer to home for more readers than the other stories of heists and hits.

That ends the discussion of the good stories, and the annoying text story. Despite good art from Eduardo Barreto, who has no problem drawing cheesecake, Gary Phillips' "The New Me" takes a bit too long to get to its silly, sci-fi twist ending, while the Alex De Campi/Hugo Petrus and Fillbach Brothers stories barely even qualify as crime stories, and are nearly incomprehensible. Some pages of the De Campi/Petrus story have twenty-four panels per page, which, although mostly wordless, suggest perhaps she was undone by a restrictive format, or perhaps it was a formal experiment that just didn't work.

The final story here has some pretty big names, Brian Azzarello and the increasingly popular art team of brother Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba. It sure looks good, but Azz lets down the side with a plodding tale whose twist (SPOILER) is that it's the set-up for the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents. There wasn't a DC book this could have fit in? I give Azzarello credit for coming up with something new, if by something new you count making Thomas Wayne an insurance fraud arranging for his wife's over-insured necklace to be stolen. On second thought, no wonder this isn't in a DC book.

Leftovers aside, although there are a few weak or unclear stories, and some routine efforts, and even some that are crime comics only by a broad definition, much less featuring any of the many characteristics of the oft-debated definition of "noir" fiction, there's still some good work here from a number of talented creators of the past and of the moment, for a reasonable fee.

Christopher Allen