With Chicago doing so well in the Academy Awards (and at the box office), there should be a pretty big audience out there for Beware the Creeper. No, it doesn't have singing and dancing, but it does have a setting in the 1920s, a wild and sexy female lead and plenty of risque, arty atmosphere that brings the roaring twenties to life. Into this atmosphere come two sisters, a spoiled and dangerous rich man, a brutal rapist and a haunting, lithe figure that seems to represent a dangerous sort of insanity and vengeance. Beware the Creeper is a sexy period piece that brings the reader right into 1920s Paris and then introduces a well-realized cast of characters and a foreboding psychological mystery. Hall and Chiang have done great work separately, and pooling their talents definitely agrees with them.
I'm not a fan of the stuffy, overdramatic period piece in film or comics, but that doesn't mean I don't love a good period story. Beware the Creeper is a Vertigo twist on a DC super-hero in some ways, but more than anything its a period piece exploring Paris in the 1920s. To pull off that kind of thing, there are several key factors, and Beware the Creeper has them all. Foremost among the requirements for this kind of story is an artist capable of really conveying the feel of the times in fashion, background, style and every other element, and Chiang is definitely that kind of artist.
Chiang's work here is quite simply stunning. His characters are defined with fairly simple lines, not unlike the work of artists like Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke, but he has the same ability as those two gentlemen to speak a lot of meaning into these deceptively simple forms. Judith simply glows with sensuality, whether it's a loose dress strap hinting at her disregard for covering her body or the wicked smile that she wears which is all-too-reminiscent of the Creeper, while her twin sister Maddy has the same features but a completely different demeanor, more reserved and warm and a lot less capricious. Chiang also puts an amazing amount of detail into his background work. Each single panel is a complete work of art, with little details setting the time and place firmly in the readers' minds, and when he actually opens up into a full-page splash, as he does at the end, the effect is amazing.
Of course, Chiang's artwork, while spectacular, is not the only reason to check out Beware the Creeper. Jason Hall spends most of this first issue establishing his main characters, the twins Maddy and Judith, the police inspector Allain and the creepy Mathieu Arbogast, and I found that each of them had a pretty strong depth to them. Though we see Judith as a flirtatious, outgoing artist, we also see a bit of her vulnerable side, and Allain's good heart and nobility is contrasted with his weakness for Judith. Even Maddy, who seems a saint compared to her wild sister, has a bit of a weakness in her obvious affection for a man who is in love with her sister.
Lurking beneath this character and setting development, however, is the beginning of a thoroughly-engaging mystery. In opening and closing segments, Hall posits the existence of a brutal rapist, and while he hints at the true identity of the character through Arbogast's rage and possessiveness, I'm not certain there isn't more to it. Certainly there's a lot to be explored with this new Creeper, who shows up near the end and whose true identity, motivations and abilities are yet to be revealed. I can't wait to see more.
