4 out of 5

‘Cute’ is _certainly_ the wrong word, but there’s this undercurrent of glee to Rich Tommaso’s writing in Dark Corridor that, combined with his forced perspective Gilbert Hernandez-ish art style, gives the book this cuddly feeling that totally bristles against its bloody pulp vibe.  But this isn’t, by any means, a bad thing, and seems to follow with Tommaso’s description, in the back pages, of getting a kick out of over-the-top action fests like Scarface and Commando and Machete, which are “forced perspective” in their own ways.  DC is a mash-up of two different stories from Rich’s catalogue of ideas which eventually congeal into one crime tale taking place within his fictional city of Red Circle.  Though the term is woefully overused (and the style even more frequently woefully abused), the story slicing of Dark Corridor is very Tarantino-esque, but properly applied; it’s not really two stories but a story for each and every character, which just so happen to take place in the same time at the same place and intertwine.  This is, I think, where people get the Pulp Fiction formula wrong: thinking that there needs to be a ‘twist’ which brings everyone together, instead of just making the film or book or whatever tell stories that are, framework aside, fun and compelling.  And Corridor has that: its aged assassins; crooked ex-cops; daughters of mobsters; power-plays; robberies; and etc.  Brought together in Rich’s elastic and cartoonish art style, which sacrifices reality for sweet framing and bold action, but its not a sacrifice in Red Circle: it makes perfect sense.

A review elsewhere mentioned that the narrative divide (each issue except #6 is split into halves focusing on the two “main” narratives) causes some plotting and development hiccups, but I felt otherwise: doing this sequentially might’ve robbed it of some momentum, and I was actually overjoyed at how little scenes from issue one ended up being important for putting a character in a certain place for issue six, and other variations on this theme.  This, again, is why it’s the Tarantino formula correctly used.  The only place where I felt like we were getting cut short was at the conclusion of “season one,” the last page of this bundle of issues, because it didn’t quite seem like an organic place to end things.  Or rather, it’s a cheap place to end things.  But when the story continues, I’m sure it will remove some of that cheapness.

The read isn’t completely smooth, though: about halfway through, Tommaso starts doing full page spreads quite often, but the panel layout doesn’t properly lead the eye in the right direction.  I frequently found myself reading things out of order on those pages, and it happened often enough to become a frustration.  And occasionally Rich’s tendency to forgo some framing “rules” for the sake of symmetry or action (flipping perspective or angles) felt like a rushed art decision – like there could’ve been a way to smooth out a panel transition and keep it flowing and looking cool on the page.  Lastly, while, overall, I loved the idea of the multi-colored word balloons, it also felt hastily applied: I’m not sure why we need a rainbow within one panel; either the colors should remain consistent to a character or to a vocal “tone” in my mind, and instead, it just seemed like… colors!

But that’s the me who didn’t tear through these six issues.  I pick up and chuck a lot of crime fiction; nowadays the world has easy access to influences and so it’s easier to find a style you want to emulate.  And there are plenty of strong emulators out there.  But the creators that stick with me are those who (in my opinion) come to establish, truly, their own voice amongst the crowd.  The only downside to discovering Tommaso’s voice is that I wasn’t there to support his books prior to this.  And, y’know, that it’s going to end up making me a lot poorer collecting those books.