I'm jumping on this bandwagon post San Diego Comic Con and the Eisner Awards, and I'm definitely glad to be doing it. Right along with my Terry Moore 'Rachel Rising' horror supernatural reading, comes a Brubaker noir of stunning promise (which is already making me glad there are more volumes of this to snatch up).

This is the story of the mysterious Jo, and pretty much all the men around her, as well as their lives. It's told in several different time frames (which can get trick with who-where-when-wait what?), and the lens of her different love affairs as we are are slowly winding in closer and closer on just what the mystery behind Jo is. There are shootouts, dirty cops, cults, magic, car chases, horrible monsters, and sinister darknesses at the heart of it all!

I can't wait to get my hands on more and keep figuring out what all is going on!
( )

Really solid start to a series. I'm a fan of eldritch horror and this blends it pretty seemlessly with a noir thriller. Pacing and structure weren't flawless, but I'm kicking myself for never picking up the rest of the series as it was published. ( )

I was actually kind of looking forward to this as a change of pace, assuming it was another one of Brubaker's independent crime titles -- turns out it's actually a noir/horror mash-em-up that kinda works, kinda doesn't. I feel like Brubaker wants to have his cake and eat it, too, with both the mob and monsters fighting over the spotlight rather than finding some kind of happy medium. It's not a bad book, and Sean Phillips's art is solid, but this just didn't really grab my interest. ( )

I loved reading this tale of noir fantasy mixed with Lovecraftian occult. Brubaker blends the internal and external shades of "the dark temptations of man" (guilt, obsession, lust, selfishness, greed, etc) so seamlessly one can only consider them in hindsight. For a writer who has dedicated his career to the crime noir genre this is a perfect study of one aspect within that genre: the femme fatale. He takes the role of "the dame" and spreads out her implications in nearly cubist fashion, examining how this role leverages against the inner turmoil of a protagonist against himself, as well as the other worldly leverage it implies about the world at large (think conditions of man versus man's condition). There are other interesting considerations here as well. The weight of history, the fate of history, original sin...

I highly recommend this graphic novel. ( )

I loved reading this tale of noir fantasy mixed with Lovecraftian occult. Brubaker blends the internal and external shades of "the dark temptations of man" (guilt, obsession, lust, selfishness, greed, etc) so seamlessly one can only consider them in hindsight. For a writer who has dedicated his career to the crime noir genre this is a perfect study of one aspect within that genre: the femme fatale. He takes the role of "the dame" and spreads out her implications in nearly cubist fashion, examining how this role leverages against the inner turmoil of a protagonist against himself, as well as the other worldly leverage it implies about the world at large (think conditions of man versus man's condition). There are other interesting considerations here as well. The weight of history, the fate of history, original sin...

I highly recommend this graphic novel. ( )