4 out of 5

You love your crime fiction.  You read the books, you see the movies, you read your comics from Brubaker, and…  Well, who else is writing crime comics?  There are other writers who are known in the genre – Rucka, Gischler, and plenty more – but Brubaker seems to have cornered the market on being the guy with the go-to titles, that define themselves as genre by their look and vibe alone.  I have my problems with Brubes most of the time, so I’m happy to announce: there’s another go-to, and its name is Gravedigger.

This is everything I want in crime fiction.  When I read Hard Case Crime, when I check out some new noir-tinged flick, this is what I want: Quarry brought to life; the wizened and tough planner who knows the hustle, still gets in over his head and mixed up in insane hijinx, and inevitably comes out on top… but not without delivering some edge-of-yer-seat thrills.  Christopher Mills has very purposefully mashed up every trope, skimming just enough to be familiar but then putting a unique voice and flow on top of it.  Rich Burchett brings it to life in stunning black and white and ace, tight lettering: this is one of the few books where its unique presentation – sideways, presumably to accommodate the once-web format – is completely a boon and not a quirk, as it makes the read feel that much more cinematic.  The only hiccup here, which is that lack of a star, is in the pacing, which suffers the same fate of a lot of web strips, having to conform to a page-by-page format and thus some developments – plotwise, characterwise – feel clipped to maintain that flow.  It’s by no means a huge detractor, as the series is leaning on the history of the scene to inform its setup, but when the action heats up, you can feel the strip pushing against the confines of its time- / space-bound narrative.

Old-schooler Gravedigger gets involved with the wrong dame; there are alligators.  Get reading.