McCallum, Cory & Daley, Matthew – The Pig Sleep

Website

The Pig Sleep

Noir comics are easy to review. I’ve read plenty of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson and the gang, so I’m going to have a pretty good idea of whether or not the writer nailed the tone. And this time? We have a winner! This comic is mostly in color, but the page sampled below is such a perfect representation of the way that detectives typically size up women in those books that I had to use it. So if you hate it, feel free to spend your precious dollars elsewhere, although I think you’ll be missing out. The story is summed up pretty neatly in the sample too: four cops have gone missing and the detective is hired to find out what happened to them (and given precious little to go on). A suspect is found dead with a note indicating that he kidnapped the cops and that they’ll never be found, but our hero thinks the whole thing is a little too easy and keeps looking for the truth. It’s a pile of fun, and it even uses the old mystery trope of the typewriter with one letter that’s off to identify it. There are also four one page stories in the back, each told in rhyme, and those managed to be pretty damned engaging too (and it’s damned easy for a comic told in verse to annoy me). Matthew Daley’s art really completes the package, as the whole thing has a unique look to it that still somehow fits the theme perfectly. If you have any interest in this type of story, it’s rarely done any better than this. If you don’t have any interest in noir, why not give this one a shot to see if maybe this time you can build an interest? Expand your horizons! $5