4 out of 5

I like a good detective yarn.  I like a good one-shot.  It’s nice when these things come together.

Greg Rucka’s low-stakes PI tales told in Stumptown have, after a couple of arcs, started to pay off in comfort-reading dividends, creating the kind of world and character relationships that are earned on TV procedurals like Bones and Law & Order, where we are, in part, tuning in for the familiarity as much as the assuredness that we’ll get a fairly compact – maybe not wholly original but told well – story.  This isn’t a bad thing; shows like this stretch way back, and are sort of the TV bread and butter that get lost when everyone wants to be the next “It” show with the winning premise.  But it’s a style suited to television, and one that rarely has the opportunity to grow in the same way on the printed page.  Except, of course, in mass-market style books, that we again gobble up and love but wouldn’t necessarily push on anyone else as great literature.  That is, in my mind, what Stumptown aims to be.  Its almost frustratingly toed the local-crime line at times, to the point of rendering events… uneventful… but as something Greg seems to plonk down to enjoyably pen between other projects, taking the long road, it’s becoming more and more worth it as a sum-of-its-parts book, and I do hope it continues to have legs.

Filling out what would be an extra spot in a trade (although confusingly listed as “issue 5” on the inside cover) comes this one-shot, which takes the oh-so-typical topic of The Cheating Spouse, with Dex watching and taking photos to bring back to the husband.  We see the signs: the motel, the meetup, and we know it’s a come-on because there wouldn’t be much to the story anyhow, but Greg can be a master of commodity and detail at times, and those skills shine here.  The pouring rain; Dex’s missed texts (part of the slow-but-sure character building); that damned skateboarder that keeps criss-crossing her stakeout.  Justin Greenwood has also arrived at a style that’s starting to feel at home, maintaining the sketchy look of before but with more confidence; he now knows how Dex should look, and how Stumptown should feel.  Ryan Hill’s gloomy colors seal the deal.

When The Reveal is revealed… it fits, but feels a little last minute, in a way that I wish had made the “clues” more clearly wended into the story.  And it’s possible they were – there are a couple – and I’m just missing them, but it seems more like we know something is off and then *cough* *cough* conclusion, and it would’ve been cool if we felt like we were part of that glossed-over deduction process, if there was one.

There’s no Next Volume teaser at the end of this issue, which is a little disappointing, but the nice thing about Stumptown not having stakes is that it means Greg can leave it for however long he wants and return without it really disrupting anything.  So here’s hoping he does, eventually, return.