Jamie S. Rich and Joëlle Jones are two creators I’ve frequently heard of yet never explored their respective works to any real depth. In fact, this Small Press Spotlight offering from Oni Press represents my first foray into Rich’s not inconsiderable list of work as well as my most expansive look at Jones’ art.
Thankfully between briefly meeting Jones at Emerald City and Rich helping us out with getting our Mike Allred interview together, I managed to spot the title and its beautifully made cover. The repeated looks at it motivated me to purchase it upon my return to the Great White North, and I’m very glad that I did. The title is You Have Killed Me, and it’s a throwback to the best of noir in all of the right ways.
See what I thought of it after the jump.
Growing up in a world that lauds the works of Chandler and Ellroy, it’s easy to expect a writer of the genre to cater more towards those who are looking for deadly dames, cliched gumshoe talk, and poor impersonations of the genre. It’s a pitfall many run into as they create an all style, no substance game of crime that ultimately leaves the characters cold and their readers colder.
Thankfully, Jamie S. Rich is not the type of writer to walk into such a trap, as the characters he creates in You Have Killed Me are well crafted and ones laden with the type of history that make such a tried and true story feel fresh.
That’s sadly the problem most scribes of this genre run into: they simply forget the characters. In just 180 pages, Rich deftly develops his characters to be three dimensional representations of people locked in a mess together and binded by a history that makes their situation all the more untenable. The story is told from lead Antonio Mercer’s (or Tony, Antony, or Mercer depending on lead dame Jennifer Roman’s mood) perspective throughout, and his past clouds both his and the reader’s view of the big picture throughout.
One of my favorite things Rich does is doling out only enough information about the characters to keep us interested, and never spoonfeeding us facts to keep us around. That makes moments like the beginning of chapter five all the more powerful: we had figured that Mercer had a deeper relationship with Juliet Roman — the center of the mystery – than what we knew, we just didn’t know how deep. Yet by only revealing the cards he has to when he has to, Rich boosts the intrigue of the characters and the power of reveals such as that one.
With all that said, this does not mean he doesn’t subscribe to any genre conventions. He still utilizes the tried and true ones. The female characters are sexy and in the know, the male characters are heavies looking to use their power to control the women, and the dialogue is filled with colloquial titles (e.g. “Red”) and saucy lines. But they work.
In many ways, Rich bends these conventions to his will. By subverting character archetypes and counting on readers to be familiar with the genre, he manages to make the entirety of this exercise a continuously surprising one.
Given that this is a visual medium, the story could be great but the art could still make or break it. Fortunately Rich’s frequent collaborator Joëlle Jones is an exceptional artist, ably rendering the events on each page and proving to be a very impressive storyteller in her own right. There will be pages where Rich and Jones work effortlessly in concert, keeping dialogue minimal or non-existent and simply letting her design work tell the story. It’s a trick that sadly very few writers employ, but you can sense an implicit trust between these two creators. They know what works and what works for them, and they use that to the nth degree.
Not only that, but Jones is an ace at creating dynamic imagery that draws you in as a reader. While an artist can exist as a pure storyteller and succeed, to make a book more complete overall it helps if the artist excels in character and environment work. Jones does that and more. In fact, she even gives us one of my favorite throwbacks, using the occasional actual photograph as a background. In the hands of a less talented artist, it could be kitschy. Jones turns it into an effective tool that increases the power of the visuals.
I’d be remiss in my duties as a reviewer if I did not mention the cover. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this case it was worth $19.95 and a couple hours of my Saturday. As I said, I was sold on this book by staring at the cover from a distance while waiting to interview Mike Allred at Emerald City ComiCon. The cover is an exceptional work that does what any cover should do: tell you just enough about the story to draw you in, and nothing more.
To close this piece, I can tell you one fact that says what I thought of the book more than perhaps anything: shortly after finishing this comic I purchased another collaboration by the duo off Amazon, and am eagerly anticipating its arrival. Jamie S. Rich and Joëlle Jones are a wonderful pair of creators whom I’m eagerly anticipating more work from in the future. I recommend this book for fans of the detective genre, and for those who are just looking for some good, old fashioned comic booking.
If you’d like to check it out, Oni has a 31 page preview and Amazon has this book for just $15.56. It’s a great deal for a damn fine book.
