There's an underrated little Mel Gibson movie called Payback that pulls off a wonderful trick. The flick's tagline is "Get ready to root for the bad guy," and that's exactly what the viewer does. Gibson plays a stonecold killer and thief, and he submerges his charm for most of the film and carries the role with nothing but attitude. It's an entertaining movie in which there are no heroes, just a bad guy who follows a certain code of honor surrounded by a legion of others who don't. That's the sort of thing one will find in this small-press book. Gravedigger is a deliciously noir crime story that really makes only one mistake: it holds back too much.
Digger's the man with the plan, a career crook who can fine-tune the details of any caper better than anyone else. He's fresh out of prison, and he's tired of the life he's lead in the past. Fortunately, a score comes along that will allow him to retire from the game in a quiet and warm corner of the world. He joins a crew that plans to hijack a weapons shipment and a load of cash, and everything should work smoothly... or it would, if a certain femme fatale wasn't involved in the heist.
Rick Burchett did an amazing job of bringing a film-noir sensibility to Gotham City and the adventures of Batman and other costumed heroes. Here, he demonstrates even greater versatility in his somewhat simple style. He's about more than super-heroes, as he brings this dark and ugly story to life incredibly well. His work here reminds me of the styles of such artists as Dave (Watchmen) Gibbons, Howard (American Flagg!) Chaykin and Eduardo (100 Bullets) Risso. He conveys the arid qualities of the desert setting convincing despite being limited by the black-and-white format.
This book is also presented in a "widescreen" manner, meaning the pages are laid out in a horizontale fashion as opposed to the usual vertical approach. It adds a cinematic quality to the book, but it's also one of the qualities that leads me to believe that Matt Fraction and Kieron Dwyer's Last of the Independents served as a major inspiration for thie book. Furthermore, it also casts an aged and savvy criminal in the lead protagonist's role, and the settings are similar as well. I'm not saying that Mills aped Fractions work, though, but I suspect there's an influence at play.
This book has violence, sex and a cast of characters who can be generally described as lowlives. Mills's script incorporates such language as "bitch" and "prick," but he seems to draw the line at harsher words. And he shouldn't have. Without or without profanity, this is inappropriate fare for kids, so why not just go for broke for the sake of realism? These people should be using "fuck" in every phrase they utter, and the self-censorship here just doesn't feel right. 8/10
