|
HAIRBALL: A CAL MCDONALD MYSTERY
Mildly Recommended (5/10)
|
IDW Publishing
Writer: Steve Niles
Pencils: Casey Jones
Inks: Bruce Patterson
Letters: Sean Konot
Editor: John Layman
Price: $2.99 US |
Steve Niles has grabbed a lot of people's attention -- including Spider-Man and Army of Darkness director Sam Raimi's -- with his amazing story on 30 Days of Night (published by IDW), one of the most inventive and entertaining horror stories I've seen in some time. So when IDW solicited another Niles book with supernatural elements, I was quick to sign up. Unfortunately, by merging those elements with the hard-boiled private-eye genre, Niles falters with a script that stretches suspension of disbelief beyond the limit.
Cal McDonald is a private eye with a reputation for handling unusual cases. He succeeds is putting a stop to supernatural and superhuman threats that the police don't or won't. His latest case is at the request of a kid who thinks two of his roommates are up to no good in the basement of the house they share, and he's got some shocking proof that it's far from legal. Cal checks it out, posing as a friend of his client's, and an evening of beers and cameraderie turns into a lethal situation for McDonald and just about every other human being in the neighborhood.
I've enjoyed Casey Jones's work in the past. He's always had a light but effective visual style that did justice to the stories he was telling. That clarity is still to be found here, but Jones's usual style is nowhere to be found. A harsher, slightly inconsistent look dominates this book. Given the radical difference between the interior artwork and Jones's cover, I have to assume that Bruce Patterson's inks have submerged Jones's usual style. The work reminds me more of Steve (Whiteout) Lieber's style... which is appropriate for a story like this one. It's not that the artwork is bad, per se, but it's not what I expected at all.
Niles captures the hard-boiled, Mickey Spillane-like tone of the detective genre quite well. Sure, it comes off as a bit corny, but it works. Cal McDonald isn't a realistic figure, but he is an entertaining one. His flaws and vices are balanced by his wits and determination.
The problem with the book is that the plot makes little sense. A kid finds a body part in his roommate's room, and he approaches a P.I. instead of the police? And McDonald decides to investigate a case that's clearly a bigger deal than a simple background check? If that weren't enough, the antagonists in the story, desperate to keep their weird nature a secret, explode in a feral rage and run amok through the city. In other words, the premise behind Cal McDonald and his world is solid, but the execution of this story leaves a lot to be desired.
Email Don MacPherson comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.
|
