by Richard Sala
Suspense! Murder! Revenge!
Story: Follow Mr. Bloom a lame-duck reporter and victim of circumstance in a series murders. As a victim of murder? No, that would be a short story indeed. Just about everyone around him is either a victim or perpetrator by the end. They all want to figure out what he knows, and he just wants to get paid. He doesn't know much of anything about what is going on though, and neither do you really, just the way it should be in a suspense/thriller/mystery. Let's just say that Bloom is a target for multiple people for apparently varied reasons. Nothing like a copycat serial killer, astrologists, a creepy outsider artist, a just-as-creepy art collector, a french woman in a catsuit, and Russian woman with an eye patch, a mysterious figure in a cape and top hat, a broken down windmill outside of town, escaped mental patients, a dude who looks like a wolfman, and several assassins to make for an entertaining read. Intrigued? If so then I have done my duty with revealing anything.
Themes: I'm not really sure if this book had any themes. It was more of a clever unfolding of plot that has one wondering, "what is going to happen next?" Perhaps the moral was 'don't go sticking your nose in other people's business,' for certainly Broom could have saved himself a lot of trouble (and probably therapy) if he had just stayed out of the mess. It is hard to blame the guy though; at times the mess practically jumps on him demanding a piggyback ride. Then maybe the moral is something more like 'you can't escape justice.' There is definitely a truckload of comeuppance for those of ill deeds in the storyline. But it doesn't feel like that sort of white hat black hat sort of justice. I am not sure that Sala was trying to embed any messages actually. There was a happy ending, sort-of, and perhaps that in itself is a kind of message.
Art: Sala sure has the style to fit the story. His black and white ink renderings are full of mood... you can almost feel the intrigue. The characters are very distinct, many of the men being almost gruesome. The whole thing is very noir or Hitchcockian.
You may notice the simple page layouts that Sala uses. It is not very vogue to mostly interchange between a few cut and dry panel schemes, but it works. It was either Eisner or McCloud who stated that complex panel layouts are unnecessary, even that they can detract from the story when overused. Panel schemes are so overblown most of the time the artist might as well be vomiting out angles. This is a nice change of pace.
The storyline jumps around a lot between snippets of events in different places with different characters, slowly pulling all this rogue information into a cohesive whole. Unfortunately Sala doesn't seem to feel the need to mark these transitions visually, which can be jarring. "Okay so now we are are here? Great, great. Oh, guess we're not there anymore." Right...
Notice: There are some creepy/disturbing elements is this comic, which might turn some people off. But, even though I like a good suspense story now and again, I really don't like horror stuff. So I guess if I can handle it, most people probably will be alright.
Recommended: Yeah, it is a fun read when you want something a little lighter, but that is still plenty gripping.
...Probably the vaguest review I'll ever write.
