Reviews 

“Bad Girls”

By | August 13th, 2018
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

It’s 8pm on New Year’s Eve 1958 at mob-run Cuban casino, El Eden, and singer Taffy is on stage, while single mother and dancer Ana cares for her daughter backstage, and Gangster girlfriend Carole is getting ready for the night’s celebrations by sleeping with her mobster boyfriend’s driver. It’s almost midnight, the verge of 1959, Taffy is due back on stage; these women have killed an American gangster and a Cuban general and are preparing to steal six million dollars and escape their current lives. This is “Bad Girls,” the new graphic novel from writer Alex de Campi and artist Victor Santos, a revolutionary story of crime, ticking clocks, and women reclaiming agency.

Cover by Victor Santos
Written & Lettered by Alex de Campi
Illustrated by Victor Santos
In this heart-pounding, starkly colored, and visually stunning graphic novel, three women have twelve hours to get out of Cuba with six-million dollars on the night of New Year’s Eve 1958.
Gangster’s moll Carole, jazz singer Taffy, and mambo queen Ana all have their reasons for needing to escape the El Eden Casino in Havana. And on the tumultuous night of New Year’s Eve, when Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista flees the country and the nation falls to Fidel Castro, they get their chance…with the help of six suitcases filled with stolen dirty money. Of course, it’s one thing to get the cash…and quite another to get off the island alive.
From the Eisner-nominated writer Alex de Campi and virtuoso artist Victor Santos, this story of three strong and multifaceted women struggling to leave their pasts behind in a tension-filled getaway is timely, fast-paced, and gripping.

This noir story of women struggling to get by, who are presented with hope, a way out from Carole’s coercive relationship, a better life for Ana’s daughter, is subtly political. In this #MeToo moment, women in coercive situations are finding a voice and agency, in “Bad Girls,” they fight their way out. Our heroes, these bad girls, violently find their own way against American mobsters and Batista’s soldiers. They take the ill-gotten wealth of these bad men and aim to use it to protect themselves and their families, rather than the naked greed of the gangs and corrupt military. This is all against the backdrop of revolutionary Cuba, as Castro pushes nearer, and government officials flee the island. Just like now in America, the UK, and Europe, this setting is a tumultuous political moment for Cuba, there is a lot of hope but also fear and violence and insecurity. All the characters in “Bad Girls” are unsure of what tomorrow may bring, putting them in a position where they actions can be large, dramatic, and brutal.

The progression of time, a push toward that unknown tomorrow, is a constant presence. Striking all black title pages, a strong contrast from the colourful and often intricate art, just display the time as a chapter title – one each hour from 8pm until 5am. This ticking clock provides the book with a constant forward momentum, building and building as the pages turn. Having said that, at first, it does feel a little slow, it takes a while to get to those suitcases containing six-million dollars. The early part of the book does provide a characterful foundation for later drama to be built upon, but the hook of the plot comes a little later than you might expect.

What kept me going through that beginning, before I was truly hooked, was how gorgeous the book looks. Santos renders the pages with deliciously heavy shadows and large, distinctive characterisations reminiscent of the late Darwyn Cooke. Every page is so alive with colour and character, it’s hard to look away. This striking style carries through to the layouts of the pages. With a few notable exceptions, Santos’s pages run full bleed, utilising the full space of the page to wrap you up in this world. Often a page will be dominated by one feature image, with a string of floating, smaller panels, with their thick white borders guiding you through specific aspects of the scene, in some really exciting ways.

The final element of these innovative and beautiful pages by Santos is the lettering, by de Campi. There’s a saying that ‘good lettering is invisible’ but I don’t think that’s right; serviceable lettering is invisible, good lettering is a part of the art, integrates and innovates in the same way as the art. And that’s what we have in “Bad Girls.” As de Campi has said, ‘[Santos’s art] makes me work harder, push myself further, because I want to do justice to what he has created.’ The lettering flows and shifts with Santos’s lines, different environments and sources of sounds look different on the page. Perhaps this is most clear in the frequent use of lyrics from songs and performances in “Bad Girls.” The lines of the song create a rhythm for the pages in much the same way as panel layout and size; together making a cohesive and engrossing whole.

That music is vital to the texture of the world de Campi and Santos are creating; using real songs from the era to believably build the world of a 50’s gangster-run Cuban casino. The bright lights and big songs of the very American casino are juxtaposed with the external world of regular Cuba, which has a more naturalistic colour palette. There’s a subplot in “Bad Girls” about a naïve girl looking for a new year’s party that Marlon Brando is rumoured to be at, in her search the world outside El Eden can be built. It gives a chance to break the bubble of the casino, and the very serious plot therein, and give the Cuba of “Bad Girls” a more varied feel.

It’s 5am, the sun is rising on a brand-new year, and a brand-new Cuba. Batista has fled; the revolution has come. Three girls have tried to run away with six-million dollars of mob money, did they manage to? Not without sacrifice. What’s next for these girls and for Cuba is unclear, as ever, but there is hope in that uncertainty.


Edward Haynes

Edward Haynes is a writer of comics, fiction, and criticism. Their writing has been featured in Ellipsis, Multiversity, Bido Lito!, and PanelxPanel. They created the comic Drift with Martyn Lorbiecki. They live in Liverpool, where they hornily tweet for your likes and RTs @teddyhaynes

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