My First Review of 2010

Belated Happy New Year all,

I got bored so here's my review for a few different things; Death Comes For The Fat Man, a Dalziel/Pascoe novel by Reginald Hill, Incognito, a noir comic by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and the second volume of Air by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker.

First, I'll tell you why, in my opinion, this installment of the Dalziel/Pascoe mysteries is one of the weaker titles in the series. Yes, I am a bit of a genre fiction geek and I enjoy Reginald Hill's wit and suspense building techniques. Dalziel and Pascoe are pretty compelling characters and as the title suggests, the Fat Man (Andy Dalziel) is dying.
The premise is simple enough, on one of Pascoe's days off, Dalziel calls him in to help negotiate with a potential gunman with hostages in a video store. The rub is that the store is flagged by CAT because of ties to known terrorist organizations. Before a resolution can be reached the store is destroyed by a bomb that injures Pascoe and sends Dalziel into a coma.
A whirlwind mystery ensues, involving racism, profiling, and certain metaphysical experiences.

It's quite different from Reginald Hill's usual work, and my biggest complaint is that the whole book seems to be pandering to the ignorant masses and the hype of terrorism. Terrorism has existed for a long time and will continue to exist as long as there's hate in the world. Would this book have been more successful to me if it had come out in 1998? Probably. But since we do live in a "post-9/11" world, any attempt to condemn or condone anti-terrorist actions just comes off as pretentious and snobby. Anyway, That shouldn't take too much away from the novel. I'll reiterate that the style and character drama remain unchanged and the suspense building and reveals are well-paced. It could have used a better copyeditor though, since there were enough misspelled words and incorrectly placed words for me to notice. I have the hard-bound edition though, so I'm sure the paperback resolved those issues. Overall I give the novel a 7/10.

Now, it's no secret how gaga I am over the team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Sleeper, Criminal and now Incognito are definite favorites of mine. Brubaker's gritty noir style coupled with Phillips' clean, simple art and ominous light and coloring make for a suspense-filled world of intrigue, drugs, murder and superheroes.
The premise is kind of neat, in that Brubaker analyzed the concept of the anti-hero. Usually it's a good guy (detective, superhero, etc.) who has to test the limits of his own morality when faced with the hard decisions that come along with noir storytelling. Brubaker turns this idea on it's head, and the protagonist of this story is a supervillain named Zack Overkill, who is placed in witness protection after testifying against his own crime boss.
Overkill quickly grows disgusted with living a normal life working in the mail room of a corporate office. Alcohol, weed, sex... nothing gets him out of his rut until his discovers the thrill of being a costumed vigilante. Now on the other side of the law, working in secret, Overkill finds some sense of satisfaction beating the snot out of thugs and cursing out the would-be victims of their crimes, until his old supervillain buddies figure out where he's been all that time.
This is a great story with gratuitous violence, excellent pacing, and a somewhat uplifting theme for a noir story. It's about as close as you'll get to a happy ending with Brubaker, so it's worth picking up. 10/10

Air. This has been strangely a hit for me. It's not usually the sort of thing I'm into, but the wild fantasy coupled with reality-bending powers and steam-punk aesthetics make for pleasing images. Again, I find myself put-off by the overabundance of terrorist-related drama, but at least in this case it's warranted since a good portion of the book takes place on airplanes or in airports.
The protagonist, Blythe, is a flight attendant with a crippling fear of heights and unique psychic abilities. Her character is well-written apart from her near-creepy obsession with her lover, who may or may not be a terrorist, Zayn.
This volume is much less realistic than the first in that there is more metaphysics and strangeness going on, but it seems understandable because the first volume seems like pure exposition compared to this one. It has a lot of provocative metafiction going on, which adds to the ongoing mystery of the series' rival factions; the hyperpracts and Etesians. There are plenty of unanswered questions by the end of the volume and I suppose that would be my biggest complaint. There just isn't a story arc in the traditional sense of ongoing comic books. I like this series overall, but it really should be read as a 300-page graphic novel rather than 6-issue arcs and especially not single issue format. 8/10

That's it for now. I'll get around to a more regular schedule of posts once life calms down a bit.

-Steve