2 crampons out of 5

Archaia publishing is the king of painting a pretty picture.  I don’t know exactly how they stay afloat putting out such professional editions of small press stuff, but I respect the dedication to quality and it keeps me picking up books like “Mr. Murder is Dead.”

…Though it doesn’t make the books very good, necessarily.  “Mr. Murder” has a glowing foreword by A Name author (Jeph Loeb) and is based on a pretty slick concept brought to comic life – top cop Gould Kane used to be a Golden Age pulp star, in pursuit of Mr. Murder.  Flash forward to the modern age and Kane and Murder are old men, retired.  And then Mr. Murder turns out dead.  Is Kane to suspect?  Victor Quinaz wants to use a noir premise to work his way through a playful exploration of heroes and villains through the ages, illustrated cleanly by Brett Schoonover.

If anything wins you over here, it’s going to be the book’s look.  Schoonover does some work to match the look of Kane’s pulp stories to the era in which they’re published, as the series is interspersed with flashbacks from the cop’s life with Mr. Murder.  While the middle period has more subtlety than the differences between modern and golden age, there’s a fun little bit in the back that gives you a rundown of the techniques used for differentiating the styles and that’s pretty cool.

Unfortunately, whether it’s Quinaz’s art directions are Schoonover’s sense of paneling, all that effort comes off in a bit of a wash.  The story and layouts don’t pack enough punch to actually get you interested and the plot developments come too quickly to have much impact.  That pretty picture ends up being the majority of what you end up with.  Still, there’s energy and inspiration here and that’s worth… well, it’s worth my continued support for Archaia for better or worse.  Hey, Loeb liked it, so maybe you will too.  YA JERK