2 out of 5

Story by Weisman and Cosby, script to Cosby. …Whose work I fell in love with on Cow Boy, years ago, and have been stymied upon furthering that love with only sporadic writings, and an advertised Cow Boy followup never happening. Cosby, moreso an editor by trade, sank pretty fully into that role, and I’ve been happy to see his name in credits on titles I read, but happier on those rare occasions he’s in the writer’s chair.

It’s been a while, though. I have the trouble placing the timeline of some of his Kickstarter projects, because the actual completion date of those is (as of this review) still pending, and I’d imagine the writing was done closer to the kickoff, so in terms of published work where Cosby is credited as writer… I think we’re looking at 8+ years ago?

Anyhow, that’s a weak sidestep; I just want to extend some credit to Cosby, as this outing is not his best, and its execution feels rusty. I can’t recall if Cosby previously edited his own works, but he does so here, and unfortunately my first thought was: this could’ve used an editing pass. The first page unnecessarily repeats a certain phrasing – giving it focus – for no reason, and in general, the way the story is laid out, one or two call-outs could’ve punched up the “mystery” to feel more effective. Or fun. It’s conceptually fun – Broadway dons a trenchcoat and heads out to pulp-detective a cold case from Elisa’s past – and Nate gets in some funny genre pokes, but otherwise all the major touchpoints of storytelling fall pretty flat: how the hook is introduced; how Broadway navigates through the tale; and how it’s concluded.

Artist George Kambadais is complicit. The INJ Culbard-esque digitalness of the backgrounds / effects / colors and very broad figurework don’t time well with Cosby’s more “animated” writing style, and the narrative feels like it could click if more tightly tied to visual cues, but instead, again from the first page – the description of a building – it falls apart. I sat on a panel and that page for minutes, trying to align Nate’s description to the building, and it was just… off. While comics is obviously a words + art medium and so that offness will always be a problem, a detective story with interrogations and clue-finding requires that sync even moreso, and it’s not reliant on big action or visuals.

Elisa recalls a case that still haunts her to Goliath; Broadway overhears and pledges to solve it. Spoiler: the mystery gets solved, and it means Elisa must’ve been a pretty poor detective, or is a poor detective, or has particularly bad followup skills for something that has apparently been on her mind for years – catches that, again, could probably have been smoothed over with some editing massages to the story.