For all that crime comics have made a comeback in the industry, it can be difficult to find a good mystery unless the name "Ed Brubaker" is somewhere on the cover. However, with Dodge's Bullets, Faerber's name goes alongside Brubaker, Lapham and Rucka as someone whose crime fiction I'll definitely check out in the future, because this is a slice of pure noir with an engaging and quirky lead and an engaging and surprising mystery plot. Faerber is joined in this endeavor by James Francis, an artist whose work I've never seen before but who is a great match for the book, with a style that reminds me of everyone from Charlie Adlard to Guy Davis to Brian Michael Bendis.
Dodge's Bullets (a great title, by the way) focuses in on Webster Dodge, son of a cop who rebelled against his father by becoming a would-be rock and roller and a private investigator. That's a great hook, which has only one problem, that the rock star angle is one that really feels like an afterthought in this book. In fact, if you cut out the entirety of the rock stardom dream, which consists of a couple lines of dialogue and an opening rehearsal, the book wouldn't lose anything. From an expectation standpoint, I was disappointed that we didn't see more of a quirky blend of music and crime that I was hoping for.
Fortunately, my expectations were subverted to provide something better, something that reads like a pretty pure noir mystery. Faerber has a modern setting here, with touches like the office in the cybercafe or references to some modern forensics techniques, but the general feel is right out of those classic '40s and '50s private eye tales. Dodge himself reads like a character with the same hard-boiled attitude and sarcastic speaking style of Marlowe, filtered through a Gen-X sensibility, and Mutsumi and Elliott serve as pretty good updates of the bar owner and partner/sidekick of the private eye that can be found in the genre in general. Faerber's pulled off a pretty impressive trick here, updating the feel of the genre for a modern era but still maintaining the indefinable qualities that made the period noir so compelling.
Along with being impressed with the tone of the story and the lead character, I was really happy with the plot of Dodge's Bullets. The temptation in these stories is to over-complicate, but Faerber keeps things pretty simple and easy to follow, all while throwing in more than a few twists. He nicely subverts expectations with one female character, leading readers down one path only to yank the rug out from them later on, and the reversals in the story of the missing father keep the story twisting and turning with just the right momentum. Dodge's Bullets is a page turner, of that there can be no doubt.
Of course, just as many noir stories have been sunk by overly complicated plots or a failure to capture the right tone, plenty of them have been sunk by inappropriate or just plain bad artwork. Dodge's Bullets lucks out in that regard as well, as James Francis (with some help from Brent McKee) serves up a variety of interesting, real looking and distinctive characters. I could quibble with some of Francis's storytelling, such as never clearly showing us that Dodge lives on a houseboat and not in a lakeside house, or that some of the action in the climax isn't as clear as it should be, but there are too many highlights to get focused on the minor flaws. The climactic action sequence features a terrific shot of gunplay from Dodge that hits all the right notes, the action always bursts into the room just the way it should in this genre, and the character interaction carries plenty of wit and pathos in the art as well as in the story.
Dodge's Bullets is a noir tale with a twisting plot, some genuinely funny moments and atmosphere to die for. I hope that we'll be seeing more adventures of this character from this creative team in the future.
