1 out of 5

Cythina von Buhler had quite a history in stage productions, children’s books and other artistic expressions before she got to her first written-and-drawn-by comic book featuring female detective Minky Woodcock: The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini. Still, comics are (and always will be) a particular beast, and I’ve often found that those who come to the format from other creative mediums struggle with it at first. Despite research on how to do it, despite any fandom that’s prepped you, going into comics when you’ve already trained your “art” muscles on other forms of expression is a difficult switch.

That’s the line of mercy I’m offering this book, as I otherwise quite disliked reading it. Some / all things are subjective with reviews, of course, but even when trying to frame aspects of this book by their genre or style, I found it to be an unfortunate outing, an opinion further formalized by the collected edition’s backmatter, as it offered a suggestion – beyond first-time foibles – as to why things just didn’t work for me.

From afar, the pitch works: Minky Woodcock’s father is a respected detective; she’s the office help, but obviously capable of much more than that, and uses her pop’s vacation time as a way of taking on a new case: exposing Harry Houdini, noted skeptic, as an actual communes-with-spirits type! Okay, that pitch doesn’t actually quite work as a hook, as it’s pretty silly on its own, but firstly, the task is delivered by noted non-skeptic Arthur Conan Doyle – Buhler has taken the path of weaving fiction into the reality of Doyle’s / Houdini’s friendship and relative beliefs; and secondly, Minky takes on the case with some whimsy and curiosity, setting the tone for something similarly whimsical.

The art is a distracting middleground between Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls storybook and Tony Harris’ photo-reproductions; while the page layouts are fanciful, they don’t read in the comic format well – our eyes bounce all around – and this further doesn’t sync with the general uncanny valley of a Harris approach, especially with elements like textures and text statted in as part of that Lost Girls patchwork vibe. I can definitely see how this works in children’s books, but it’s not fully formed as its own style for a paneled approach or to depict conversations / comic book action all that well, making pages look fine from afar, though a chore to read.

But back to that whimsy, as perhaps the story’s blending of pulp erotica and other tropes with a fun take on Doyle / Houdini might be enough of a distraction. Alas, there’s really not a story here, so much as Buhler taking bits and bobs of recorded history surrounding Houdini’s death and, I dunno, inserting Minky into the background. We do vaguely explore the era’s much documented trickeries with mediums, and I appreciate how the R-rating of the book allows Buhler to keep in the dirty bits involved with that, but again: this isn’t really plotting so much as a wiki article Buhler read and was like, that’s neat, I want to draw that. (I’m positive more effort went into it than that – linked on the Minky Woodcock website – but unfortunately, the surface level I’m ribbing is what’s on the page.)

This is what’s exposed in the backmatter: we get an afterword where Cynthia says This Stuff Happened! and recounts some events from the book, and, to me, it forms the subtext that that was the point, and makes clearer why Minky is hardly a character and why there’s not really a story.

Some credit should be due to the hardcover collection itself, which looks and feels quite nice – a bright printing; flippable but thick paper stock – and comes stuffed with the mentioned afterword alongside a couple others (Charles Ardai’s pitch for Hard Case Crime comics; a mention of Minky appearing on stage) and a collection of all the nice covers, some of which are also used for chapter breaks. But I hesitate to buck the rating up for that as the main content was otherwise unenjoyable for me.

…Which I don’t enjoy pulling apart. Certainly, this subject matter will be new to some folks, which will probably make the facts-recollection approach more intriguing, and the effectiveness of the stylized art thus less offensive (i.e. you’re getting more out of the text, so maybe eye direction of a comic book page isn’t as negative). For me, though, there’s not an element beyond the hardcover presentation that is without some substantial criticisms.