3 out of 5

Almost achieves what it’s after.  ‘Dames’ wants to be all things pulp and manages to be some things pulp with a pretty fun story and cool conceptual design… but seems, in a way, equally limited by that design, plus Marc Sandroni’s art is – I must say – only workable, keeping the book looking like the indie affair that it is.  Plus there ain’t really too many dames in the whole thing.  So there’s a nice retro cover with a pretty slick design and a good use of various shades of red to keep with the whole sultry sci-fi thing.  ‘Art of Fiction’, the publisher, chose interestingly thin stock for the covers – it doesn’t sacrifice color at all, but you’re surprised when you flip the page how magazine-y it feels – especially once you get to the thicker, coloring-book quality style pages (Does this descriptor make sense to you?  It’s like a waxy coating feeling to the page that I might mistakenly affixing to coloring books.  I don’t really know because I never had a childhood.).  The color on these does tend to take a hit – it looks like big, bright solid pop color were preferred, but the print has a muddled look to it.  I mean, it’s an indie publisher, so you decide how and where to spend your dollars, but I flipped through this several times before purchase (based on reading another Art of Fiction book I liked) and put it down because it felt cheap and, yeah, sometimes with indie books that ends up saying something about the story quality as well.  You can say that the packaging was purposeful to maintain the whole dime-store thing, but, eh, I don’t t’ink so.

Anyhow, our story is broken up into sections separated by pin-ups that announce the title – creatively blended in as fight promotion flyers, or postcards – or flashbacks that are illustrated in kitschy ways – like an old school newspaper strip or an Archie comic.  It’s all very inventive, it just needs more space to be effective.  The break are used to make some pretty nasty narrative leaps in a couple places, and while it’s a fun sort of ‘To Be Continued!…’ only to jump right into the next zinger of mad scientists or Communist triplets, with the senseless way the book ends – totally devolving into a laser gun battle that seriously doesn’t have any logic behind it – it seems that Ryder was mashing the zippy pace of pulp over-top of a story that was poorly paced initially.  It starts off with the best of intentions – private eye investigating a missing dame finds said dame with his best friend, right before they get attacked by Russian speaking dudes who look alike and wear the same clothes – but three seconds later we have giant mutated ants and aliens with only the slimmest of reasons why.  Now I say this critically, but I enjoyed the book.  Ryder, to his immense credit, didn’t commit the sin of writing it in Golden Age dumb speak, so sure, it has the simple snap of dialogue of the era, but nothing is outright stupid, and the scenes that ARE here (as in not excluded via those chapter breaks) are definitely written well and fun.

Sandroni’s art skips by with pretty simple backgrounds and figures for most of the way through.  This wouldn’t be so bad except the color choices (drab blues and browns) make the foreground blend together, and then with everyone wearing suits, it becomes a lot of looking-alike from panel to panel.  His action is also a little stiff.  But it does the job, and he makes the right decision of keeping some out-there concepts (the aliens, the giant ants) simple to match his skills.

‘Dames’ is an easy, entertaining read, but it’s a glimmer of something that could’ve been even more entertaining, given a bit more space to grow.  It’s certainly enough of a glimmer that I’d buy a second volume if it came out, and will encourage me to continue checking out Art of Fiction releases.