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MURDER ME DEAD #7
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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El Capitan Books
Writer/Artist: David Lapham
Editor: Deborah Dragovic
Price: $2.95 US |
This is a series that was
born for the graphic novel format, and while I am enjoying it in serial format,
I know I'll enjoy it more when I can read it all in one go. That's largely
because there's a fairly impressive cast of characters with somewhat
labyrinthine motivations and relationships, and while each issue stands on its
own relatively well, the story deepens the more you remember about various
characters. Lapham isn't making things easy on the readers, either, with
characters who are much more than they seem, and who have lied to other
characters (and by extension, to the reader). Even with the full picture
provided by the series so far, there are nagging hints that we don't really know
the full extent of things yet. This makes for a challenging read, but ultimately
a very rewarding one, as this book makes you think.
As with Stray Bullets, Lapham doesn't really give us good guys and bad guys. Instead,
these are just people, motivated by fear, greed, love, lust, all the usual
things, into actions that may be good or bad. Steven, our protagonist, can at
times seem naive and gentle, but he has committed murder at least once and drove
his wife to suicide at the very least. Tara, his love interest, originally
seemed like someone with mistakes in her past, but may be even more calculating
and downright criminal than she originally seemed. And everyone seems to be
hiding something, which is very true-to-life. Nobody ever really tells anybody
everything.
While Lapham is known these days for his
crime fiction, the fact of the matter is that I think he could write just about
any genre. The interaction between his characters is very real and enjoyable,
and I'm as entertained by a few pages of Steven interacting with Tini or hanging
out with his old club buddies as I am by the tension-filled search of Tini's
house. Lapham's crime fiction is so effective because it's set in a recognizable
world, one where people talk and eat dinner and do all sorts of normal things in
between the strange criminal goings-on.
His artwork maintains that reality throughout. Though his design of characters for this series is more clean and attractive than the often ugly or plain cast of Stray Bullets, the amount of detail in the settings is still incredible, and
though the characters may be attractive, they're realistic in their beauty. It's
easy to connect to them as real people in real settings, and that serves as a
nice familiar base for the unfamiliar con games, murders and
investigations.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
