I thoroughly enjoyed Mike Hawthorne's recent work on Three Days in Europe from Oni Press and Whiskey Dickel, International Cowgirl from Image Comics. I even have a soft spot for his little known self-published effort, Hysteria (which Randy and I reviewed back during our Psycomic days in 1999). Even given that familiarity with his work, his performance as the penciller on this book took me by surprise. There's an intensity and grit to be found here that's shocking and effective. It's unfortunately that the script -- or a lack thereof -- didn't mirror that visual strength.
San Francisco is being ruled by the iron fists of evil and violent men, and there seems to be little done about it. Shopkeepers are victimized so thugs can bring offerings back to their leaders, and murder and rape are commonplace. Meanwhile, supernatural forces lurk at the periphery of this violent world. Meanwhile, a mother and daughter find themselves in a dangerous position, and a new player in this violent world emerges... much to the chagrin of the young, attractive mother.
Hawthorne's art is stunning here. There's an edge that many of his readers might not have seen in his work before. The violence is unflinching, but it never really seems gratuitous either. Hawthorne is successful is conveying how extreme and ugly this vision of a crime-dominated San Francisco truly is. I suspect Rick Remender's inks had a lot to do with the gritty and chaotic look of the linework. It's easy to compare Hawthorne's work here to the noir intensity of Mike Avon Oeming's work on Powers.
Remember that Marvel Comics stunt, "'Nuff Said," which saw a month's worth of Marvel titles tell stories without the benefit of dialogue or narration? It was an interesting experiment with varying results. The first half of this book reminds me of one of the failed experiments. While the silent panels bring a mythic quality to the story, they also bring a great deal of confusion. The reader is given only flashes of images instead of cohesive storytelling.
Furthermore, the writer never gets around to entirely establishing the premise and the social setting for the story. We're given no indication how San Francisco came to be the hellish landscape it is here, and the various antagonists' motives are not at all clear either. Still, the extreme nature of the story is daring, and there's definitely a degree of ambition behind the apparent broad scope of the plot.
