The Night Driver Script by Ken Lowery Artwork by Gavin Guidry Letters by Micah Myers There used to be this running column in my local weekly where people could write anonymous letters ranting about fellow citizens or making embarrassing confessions. Sometimes the rants would be about truly odd, one-of-a-kind experiences but the bulk of the […]
Judging the Book By Its Cover: White Jazz by James Ellroy
Judging the Book By Its Cover is a column where we, you guessed it, judge books by their covers. Or more accurately, we judge the covers of books, examining the different aesthetics they’ve had through the years (and in some cases titles) to determine which are the most and least effective. Even in crime lit, […]
Kill or Be Killed Claims to Be New and Different, but It’s Business as Usual for Brubaker and Phillips
There are some creative teams in comics that I’ll come out for whenever they release works, not because their consistency is so high that I know I’ll get perfection but because even if the work is disappointing, it’s still entertaining. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips stand out as especially symbolic of this, with their current […]
Midnight of the Soul is Howard Chaykin Channeling James Ellroy’s LA Quartet
I recently went through a heavy James Ellroy phase after finally tracking down some of his books that I had yet to read. The thing about reading Ellroy in chunks is that his prose is so fluid and readable it takes a while for the full weight of his viciousness to sink in. Burning through […]
Down and Out in Terminal City: Catching Up with Ed Brisson
As one of the hardest working men in comics, Ed Brisson seems to always be juggling a number of promising projects. We chatted with the gritty Vancouverite earlier this year about his trippy super hero epic The Mantle so we were happy to talk to him again about his new urban noir work The Violent. Where The Mantle was a […]
Yellowed Pages: Pink Flamingos
Sometimes we just want to talk about old comics we found in bargain bins or antique stores or in our garages. Is that so wrong? Today we bring you RJ Casey’s debut at Loser City, an excited look back at the obscure couldabeen hit comic series Pink Flamingos, published by Simon & Schuster in the wake […]
Anatomy of a Page: Rich Tommaso’ Dark Corridor #2 Page 5
Comics are a visual medium, but so often criticism of the medium hinges on narrative, ignoring or minimizing the visual storytelling and unique structures that make comics so different from cinema and photography. We’ve decided to change that up with a feature that we’re calling Anatomy of a Page, in which we explore pages and […]
Putting Out Fire with Gasoline: Wolf #1 is LA Noir with a Bite
Do you think fire stands out to humanity as an immortal symbol because of its danger? Or is it because of its utilitarian purpose? We fear fire but it also guides us, warms us, destroys forever anything we feed to it. Fire is fleeting but its destruction is permanent, a sure way to erase an object […]
Good Luck, Doc: Inherent Vice is a Stoner Noir with Sharp Vision
Before you read anything else about Inherent Vice, the latest project from lauded auteur filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, I urge you to watch the trailer. Like, right now. The trailer’s uncanny comedic timing, musical exuberance, and oddball stoner-noir narration (courtesy of Joanna Newsom) come together with stunning clarity into what could be described as a sort of multi-sensory poem, […]
