Four Color Noir, Part One: General Discussion

I picked up the first (only?) Fell trade a week or so ago, on a whim after reading a "What you should read after Watchmen" piece from GQ that compared it to Homicide: Life on the Street. It's nothing like my number one favourite tv show of all time, and I will never take comics advice from GQ again.
I'm only into the third story so far and not sure if I like it (still trying to untangle my H:LOTS expectations).
I was unimpressed with the first issue of Ed Bru's Criminal, though maybe I should revisit???

I love Criminal. Also, I'm sure you are sick of people telling you this, but "The Wire" is what H:LOTS became when it grew up and got really good at its job.

Yes. I am about halfway through Season 2. It is excellent and in all likelihood better than H:LOTS, but I won't truly surrender my heart until Season 5 when I get my Clark Johnson on (yes, I know he directed the first two episodes of Season 1).
I have also decided I am going to become the David Simon of Canada. Perhaps in name only.

Just to clarify a few things:

1. This is not the place to discuss Green Lantern: Blackest Night (howev, someday Brubaker might return to DC and write a Golden Age GL story called "Noirest Night" set in the Great Depression where Alan Scott, railroad engineer, finds himself threatened by a tramp with a toothpick. When the Sean Phillips artwork for that starts emerging, we can talk about Green Lantern here.
2. I'm using noir in the current comic book meaning, ie, crime stories, not actual noir-qua-noir.
3. HELLO: http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2009/04/03/green-river-killer-roams-at-dark-horse/

END PARENTHESES

I really like Fell, 100 Bullets, Criminal, Kane and some of these other more recent crime comics I find, but I don't think they are in the same league with something like Jim Thompson or James Ellroy.

Ed Brubaker did do a one-shot starring James Gordon as a 50s run down character from a James Cain story called Gotham Noir. That may have been the first time he partnered up with Sean Phillips.

i will be hanging out on this thread a lot

Rucka's upcoming run on 'Tec looks veeeeeeeeeeery promising.

Search: Rucka, Brubaker, Lapham, Vacchs, Azzarello, Johnny Craig,

I love Gotham Nights; at its best that's your comic Homicide.

Criminal -- get the first and second trade. The last arc didn't really do much for me. Incognito -- also fun.

Has Alack Sinner by Muñoz and Sampayo ever been translated to English? Because that's a great neo-noir comic series with some highly impressive art. It's black and white though, not four-colour.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/197/478937069_ad6aa6e7da_o.jpg

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_sAjrIDvcKBk/SOEymllvA_I/AAAAAAAAH_o/9iUG8ulsOek/sk_01_alack_sinner.jpg

Hmm, apparenly those are resized when posted here. But you can copy and paste the URLs to see them in bigger size, Muñoz is a brilliant artist.

http://www.metabunker.dk/wp-content/uploads/munoz_sampayo_sinner2.jpg

see also: Mammoth Book of Crime Comics, which makes me lust for more Torpedo 1936. Has that seen recent reprint???

Yeah, that Mammoth Book is fantastic--though I wish it had reprinted the whole Dashiell Hammett thing, for completeness' sake.

yes tuomas, lots of ALACK SINNER has recently been reprinted in the recent SHOWCASE: AMBUSH BUG collection

also search: CITY OF GLASS by Auster, Karasik and Mazzuchelli; Jacques Tardi's adaptations of Leo Malet's NESTOR BURMA novels; DIFFERENT UGLINESS, DIFFERENT MADNESS by Marc Males (excellent depression-era James M Cainesque drama translated by Humanoids/DC, as is MISS: BETTER LIVING THROUGH CRIME by Thirault, Riou and Vigouroux, w/ an introduction by Ed Brubaker, even); the two albums written by Jerome Charyn (himself an good metaphysical crime novelist) and drawn by Francois Boucq; IN THE DAYS OF THE MOB by Jack Kirby; DIABOLIK and other Edgar Wallace-inspired Euro-Krim characters.

IDW is reprinting TORPEDO, I think as a giant book. I'd heard it was coming out this year, but haven't seen confirmation. Also keep an eye out for Darwyn Cooke on the PARKER books (based on Westlake's character of the same name.)

There's at least one collection of the JOE'S BAR stuff from Catalan Communications, but that's way out of print. I get mine at Comic Relief when I hit the Bay Area. Inquiry there might be fruitful. Some of it also showed up in RAW, apparently.

SCALPED is as good a regular crime book as there is right now, nunchuck-bad-assery or not. I suspect that the rest of the Vertigo crime line will be worth looking into, but haven't seen any of it first hand (other than covers).

There were a handful of ALACK SINNER translations done by Fantagraphics in the 80s under the name SINNER. I believe the plan at the time was to do more but it didn't happen.

Personally, I've never seen them in the wild, but do remember hearing about them in the wake of Giffengate.

SHOWCASE: AMBUSH BUG

ha, you'd think that would have been enough reason for Giffen to resist the b&w reprint!

Also: MUKTUK WOLFSBREATH, HARD-BOILED SHAMAN. Which is exactly what it sounds like.

On the Brubaker front, don't neglect SLEEPER or LOWLIFE (very, very different comics, though).

OG Muktuk was B&W BTW

Dick Tracy IDW reprints are also worth noting.

I don't why I've resisted until now, but am now INTENSELY interested in Scalped. May ride up the street on my lunch break to buy some trades even though I officially wait until there's a new issue of Batman & Robin to darken the door of my LCS these days.
Also, Stumptown is really good, haven't read #3 yet, but it's kinda like Rucka figured out exactly which of his usual tricks really turn me on and just stayed with those.
The IDW Torpedo reprint is great. Despite the fact that its often more sadistic and uglier than Sin City, it also has a fucking pulse and when it plays sick shit for perverse kicks it doesn't pretend it's doing it in service of style or some whatever.

LOVE the Torpedo.

Scalped is pretty good, just understand the first story arc is by far the worst. It sets things up, but Aaron hadn't found the right voice for the story.

I need to pick up Torpedo.

LCS didn't have the first Scalped trade, but I got the first Criminal trade. Twittered about it, and the arty comic shop up the street twittered back that they've got Scalped, so now I'm in business and have a date with the arty comic shop tomorrow!

So what do people like about Criminal? Was 100% prepared to have my first impression from the first issue proven wrong, but instead it's been validated. The art is great, and the writing is mostly y'know solid, but it's more boilerplate than hardboiled, no?

And there are no horny old heroin addicts. That's just not the way heroin works.

Does Criminal get better? Is Brubaker BETTER when writing crime fic in superhero drag (or espionage-thriller in superhero drag, which is where Captain America falls IMO)? Because Criminal: Coward just seems so by-the-numbers. I dunno, is that the point of the Criminal series, though? Do later volumes get beyond codified noirisms? Brubaker has done so much right by me that I want to give him every opportunity to titillate me further. But shit, I haven't even read Sleeper yet.

Scalped, meanwhile, hell yeah. I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out.

Scalped is much better than Criminal. Criminal has yet to break codified noirisms, as you so nicely put it. But I think it is better than Incognito, which is supervillian-in-hiding with codified noirisms.