Zombos' Closet of Horror

The Chill: Vertigo Crime Goes Supernatural

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

I worry a lot when reviewing a graphic novel. So many things to consider; you've got the artwork, you've got the writing, you've got everything between the art and the writing--and it all works up to either a good or a bad story. It's an encompassing beam bar balancing act and one little slip can send everything screwy. Then there's the personal bias; every critic has one, whether we admit it or not. Usually we leave it up to the reader to pick it out, like a fly in a bowl of chowder; it's there, but the devil to find it.

Jason Starr and Mick Bertilorenzi manage to balance The Chill without going screwy. Starr's got a nasty habit of using too many get-the-bar-of-soap-ready cuss words in his characters' dialog, but I admit I'm peevish with writers using fuck you this and fookin' that--with variations. It gets in the way of writing really good dialog when you're forced to dance around the expletives you'd naturally rope a dope with. But let me make this easy for you: there's my fly in the chowder.

Starr's story is gritty, sexy, and sopping with imaginative Druid magic references. Bertilorenzi's artwork makes it come alive. His panels barely contain it all and spill across the pages, keeping up the momentum of Starr's mystery that begins in County Clare, Ireland a ways back, and continues over the years, getting worse as she goes.

A lover escapes death and the lovee has something awaken inside her. It's called the chill. Not really good for her or her lovers, but her dad benefits most from it. As to why that is, you won't hear it from me; you need to read the story. But I can tell you Bertilorenzi's visual interpretation of Starr's terror--all the bad killings, the cuss-mouthed but obtuse detectives, the gritty city, and the nasty messing the sheets sex is rendered in black and white and shades of gray. He's got a good Mickey Spillane trashiness going with Starr's innocent and blemished people meeting their doom.

The only glamour in this story comes from Irish magic. Most everyone starts off looking good, but Starr must have some flies in his chowder, too, because even professors and priests wind up researching and preying more than they morally or legally should.

Review copy provided by DC Comics/Vertigo.

Simon Dark's Gotham City No Walk in the Park

Lurks in Shadows. Hides in the park.
Simon. Simon. Simon Dark.
If you're good he'll stay away.
If you're bad he'll make you pay.
Lurks in Shadows. Hides in the park.
Simon. Simon. Simon Dark.

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Simon Dark's first two graphic novels, What Simon Does (collecting issues 1 through 6) and Ashes (collecting issues 7 through 12), must be read together. The first sets up Simon's bizarre background and the second delivers the main storyline of Lovecraftian-styled witchcraft, which depends on that set up. Mixing fairly equal parts of mystery, occult science, and recognizable horror elements such as the Gothic, a creepy-looking sack-like mask, and conniving robed worshipers of demonic beings, Steve Niles builds an effectively darker Gotham City than even Batman deals with. This atmosphere is further enhanced through Niles' characters, those both good and evil, who either aid or hinder Simon Dark in his continuing battle with the dark side, and in his search to understand his ultimate purpose for being.

These characters are arrestingly drawn by Scott Hampton, who makes Simon's world properly Gothic, but perhaps a little too dark at times. His carefully stylized, foreground-heavy, panels flow across pages like single frames in a movie, creating images that are  static and posed, and lacking an internal dynamism. He reminds me of Al Williamson, although not as detailed when drawing background imagery. Hampton's unique faces are like portraits and they play an important role in his composition by generating emotional depth with their sober expressions; at first, this near photo-realistic approach is elegantly novel, but it can lead to confusion between the two heroines; a pathologist, Beth Granger, and Simon's soulmate, Rachel Dodds, when their features blur into similarity as dire events involving them unfold . Rereading clears up this confusion (along with clothing cues I missed initially), but more detail and less black in the scenes would have mitigated this.