1 out of 5

Man, I’ve only read a couple of these Vertigo Crime graphic novels, and I really appreciate the riff they were going for, with matching trade dress and ditching the issue format to better mimic a pulp book, but the ones I’ve read – now including Jason Starr’s The Chill – fall prey to a similar try-hard ethos, as though the outline was delivered, and an editor (Will Dennis is listed) to a glance and said “this is good, but can you make it even pulpier?” and then we’ll imagine that cycle repeated several times over. …Meaning there are some good stories that kind of hang in there for a few chapters, but then go off the rails with excess sex, swearing, nonsense twists, or etc., but not so in excess as to be entertaining – a la Starr’s “The Max” novels with Ken Bruen – and rather coming across as pretty amateurish. And, as mentioned, try-hard.

The Chill is a clunky but interesting mash-up of folklore and crime, tying a femme fatale killer to some ancient Druidic rites that have resulted in a string of grisly deaths in modern day NYC. Ex-cop Martin Cleary – drunk, raving – recognizes something in these killing that he tries to ‘splain to a straight-laced NY detective, Payano, but he’s waived him off. As the killings continue, though, Cleary’s accurate descriptions of goings-on make him a suspect…

Some of Starr’s novels have a bit of social commentary wended into them, and he often is happy dealing with the seediest of underbellies. But neither one of those are absolutes, and though it took me some time to adjust to the tone, I’ve come to really adore most of the writer’s work for the way it dances through the crime genre and its tropes. So the fact that The Chill is lacking in subtext and is chock full of sex is fine; but: that the story seems told almost out of order, and repeats story beats just to get to a page count, and that the sex lazily assumes that every hot chick is a booby blonde – man, it can be both frustrating and boring to read.

I do want to underline that things work for about half the 200-ish pages of the book. It’s all a bit lurid and obvious, but the flashback intro to “The Chill” – the curse / power the femme fatale owns, which is employed during sex – has pulpy gravitas, and the jump to the present to some obnoxious teens being subjected to that curse tickles the same dudebro ribbing The Max does, before segueing into some CSI / Criminal Minds cop stuff that gives us a solid framework and character set for what’s to come. Except even here there are troublesome indicators, that partially seem to have come from artist Mick Bertilorenzi, but maybe could also be blamed on Starr being very early in his comic career: the descriptions of the murder and the visuals don’t always seem to line up, and the tone is just very unclear, as to whether it’s ironic and self-aware, or grisly beat, or so on. But we keep going, because the pieces being gathered are intriguing, with Cleary showing up and ranting about Irish killers, and then chasing two invisible phantoms through the streets of NY. It’s goofy in a good way.

We start to juggle kills with Cleary’s rants with Payano, and the churn starts: the information that’s exposited on us feels pointless: Cleary tells people things and then seems to learn them at the same time; he’s trying to find something to combat these killers, but going about it in a way that just seems tailored to narrate background and not actually accomplish anything. There are those who seem to have some awareness of what’s what, but then get suckered into Chill-ed deaths anyway, and again – all with a booby blonde, who’s hot, y’all, ’cause short hair and boobs. (I realize my lack of some specifics here may not be helping – is it this same femme fatale causing these deaths? So why wouldn’t she look the same? – but I’m avoiding some spoilers, and let me just say the actual story would suggest that booby blonde didn’t always have to be the default. It’s more clearly just what Starr / Bertilorenzi / Dennis preferred us to be looking at.)

The repetitiveness of these sex / kill cycles is paired with the lack of much story motivation beyond a point: we’ve learned what we need to, and Starr has to strain to get characters where they need to be for final scenes. Along the way, sequences start to not make sense – characters act irrationally; there’re some non sequitur plot elements that suggest this was maybe written as a full script and then chopped down to a comic (…and then fluffed back up to add some more spice for Bertilorenzi to draw?); and Cleary becomes a suspect and not a suspect and then a suspect like people only know how to pay attention to the comic book, and not whatever “real world” exists beyond the pages.

At this point, it’s just kind of a poorly written comic, but my final complaint focuses on the art. While Bertilorenzi has a Camuncoli style that totally works for the tone, it’s… a work in progress. We see some of that over the course of the book, as Mick’s line gets heavier, then lighter, but in general, the artist’s character models are slightly inconsistent, and, as mentioned, there are beats that don’t connect art with words. It’s mostly subtle, but it’s enough to add it a generally amateurish vibe. Most distracting, though, are some absolutely bizarre framings, where items block parts of characters faces, or Mick chooses an angle that just goes entirely contrary to a scene’s flow. I’m really puzzled by some of these choices. In part, I appreciate the framing experimentation the artist employs, but there were several panels where I just couldn’t figure what the plan was – like Bertilorenzi ran up against a deadline and then couldn’t go back, perhaps.

A lot of these issues, in isolation, are okay, but the sum total is burdensome. And perhaps because the front half of the book generally works, it makes it that much more distracting when the back half tanks it.