by Randy Lander

FILLER original graphic novel (Best of the Week!) AiT/Planet Lar Writer: Rick Spears Artist: Rob G. Price: $12.95 US On the surface, the latest effort from the Teenagers From Mars creative team sounds remarkably cliched. Down on his luck guy living on the fringes of society meets a hooker with a black eye, a sad story and presumably a heart of gold. Cue '70s revenge flick. Fortunately for the readers, Filler is anything but your average hooker with a heart of gold story. Every time I thought I had the book figured out, it zigged off in another direction, and Spears offers up several really good, fun, dark twists that keep the book rocketing along until the conclusion. Rob G, working in a cool as hell black, white and red palette, gives the whole thing the perfect tone, full of unrelenting violence, sleazy sex and enough blood to supply a Romero flick, and the result is a fun, inventive read in the crime genre that will give even the most jaded of crime readers a thrill. Because AIT/Planet Lar has published some fairly straightforward crime/heist stories like Last of the Independents and Couriers, Filler was able to surprise me. I thought I knew where the story was going when John Dough, full of righteous anger and packing a pair of brass knuckles, goes to visit the pimp who beats up the hooker who gave Dough a free ride out of the kindness of her heart. Thought I knew where it was going right up until the point where Dough finds cops knocking on his door, and the reader realizes right alongside Dough what's just happened, which casts everything you just read in a different light. From here, you know where the story's going to go. Dough's going to somehow get sprung and get revenge for what's been done. Except that isn't quite what happens either. Instead, Spears and G offer up a story of someone seeking revenge through smarts rather than naked brawn, and while there's certainly some tough guy behavior necessary for the plan to come together, it's as much a manipulation as the plot that Dough got involved with in the first place. It also allows Spears to deliver a pretty happy ending, unusual for a story that fits pretty clearly into the noir mold, but somehow perfectly fitting for this unusually twisted version of a noir classic. While narratively Filler breaks from tradition, when it comes to the look of the book, Rob G has perfectly captured the normal look of the genre. Using red very effectively to highlight certain elements of the story, like the blood or the neon lights, the slash of red on the hooker's lips or the red stripes on the U.S. flag on Dough's army jacket, G calls to mind Miller's early experiments with color in the pages of Sin City. There's more red at use here than in Sin City, it's much more a third color (to go along with black and white) than just a tool for shock and emphasis, but it's no less effective in capturing the tone and look of the crime genre. Rob G also brings the action storytelling sensibilities that made The Couriers books work so well to Filler, giving us some memorable sequences like Dough's escape from custody or his beating of (and beatdown by) the hooker's pimp. Filler is a twist on a crime genre classic, but it's also a story of what happens when you get caught in a sequence of events bigger than yourself. It moves along at the perfect pace, serving up plenty of twists and surprises and a couple of really memorable characters, and ends with the reader smiling as big as the characters who win at the end. 9/10 Email Randy Lander comments about this review.