1 out of 5

Tragic.  After the uneven but ‘at least they tried’ ‘Dames in the Atomic Age’ took on pulp sci-fi, Art of Fiction turns to pulp crime for what they apparently intend to be an ongoing.  Ed Laroche’s limber, heavy but cartoonish art and the slickness given to it by Tony Fleecs’ mostly duo-tone colors is a highlight, though someone made the decision to glut up the intro and a prison break sequence with gore that feels like the unnecessary attempt at being ‘hard’ that it is and it immediately cheapens the experience from page 2 – a potentially gritty interrogation sequence tossed off with a smug soundbyte that’s of the Mark Millar school of splash and cash-in nonsense.  (I’m of the ‘garden path sentences and reap-no-benefits’ school.  I got a scholarship, don’t judge.)

There’s something about a girl, and a double cross.  The predictability of the plot points would be fine – since it is a genre book – if any of the characters were memorable, but the scripters do a bad job at dividing names that matter from background names we’re not supposed to care about, cluttering 32 pages with confusing details.  As was done in ‘Dames,’ part of the book is drawn and colored in a 50s comic filter – done by Marc Sandroni, nice matte colors by Andrew Siegel – and this flashback sequence is interesting, and totally reads like Brubaker’s ‘Criminal’ or ‘Fatale’ asides, but our writers have too much history to work through in scant panels and it’s sandwiched by those ‘hard’ segments, so it comes off sort of weightless and lost.

With ‘Dames,’ I found Art of Fictions binding unique – paper-thin, magazine style covers, thicker paper stock for the contents, and a prestige binding.  But as I bent and nearly ripped the covers trying to hold the book in one hand, I’m taking a different view – it weights the book strangely and makes it tricky to fully ‘crack’ open, so you can’t even settle into the read.

Some interesting art can’t save this – physically a poor reading experience, with a script that offers nothing new or rewarding.