The bogs of Ireland are deceptive. On the surface, they’re serene and solid, no different from the land around it, but one false move and that land gives out and all you’re left with is a horrible sinking feeling. One wrong step, that’s all it takes for your whole life to come crashing down around you. A single error and all that was once safe is hostile, with little chance of recovery.
Cover by Declan ShalveyWritten by Declan Shalvey
Illustrated by Gavin Fullerton
Colored by Rebecca Nalty
Lettered by Clayon CowlesAn Irish gangster on the run after a job gone wrong stumbles upon a young woman lost in the Dublin mountains. Injured and unarmed, the unlikely pair must try to evade their pursuers and survive the desolate bog that has served as a burial ground for unspeakable murder throughout history.
DECLAN SHALVEY (INJECTION, SAVAGE TOWN) and GAVIN FULLERTON (Bags) deliver a cold and poignant story of crime, survival, and regret.
Spoilers ahead. Heavy spoilers about halfway down..
In its opening few pages, “Bog Bodies” establishes everything we need to know about Killian’s story. He’s a young, low level gangster, living on his own in Dublin. Dusk has given way to night, bringing news of a missing woman, and his co-worker and possible friend, Keano, is stopping by with one last job for the day, waxing about his aunt up in the bogs and swearing up a storm. Fairly routine mob story stuff. Shalvey wastes no time getting past that to the real meat of the story: Killian’s fuck-up back to bite him with an excellent reversal of the body in the trunk.
From here, we’re treated to 80 or so pages of the longest night of Killian’s life, as he is forced to confront his sins out between the trees and pitfalls of the bog.
Shalvey’s strengths as a writer in “Bog Bodies” is clear from the get go, and it’s also clear that this book needed to be an OGN rather than a series. There’s a lot of talking but little exposition, conveying only the necessary information as needed or between the lines. We’re in the room, in the car, on the bog, with these people as they talk and converse in human ways. Everyone swears up a fucking storm, with one very out of place slur early on, but those same people will then ask the other in earnest to watch their mouth, as if motherfucker is any different from fucker in severity of a curse. It adds that bit of levity to a very serious story when moments like these happen.
Moreover, Shalvey’s dialog actually renders Irish speech patterns rather than caricaturing them. Slang, colloquialisms and sentence construction do the bulk of the work while phonetic rendering of words (Bollicks vs British Bollocks, yeh vs you) do the rest. It remains easy to read but clearly forms the accent, and the differences in accents between the four main characters, in the minds of Americans such as myself. It also provides a beautiful contrast between the reality of how people speak and the “proper broadcast” English presented at the start of “Bog Bodies.”
Supporting all this are Fullerton’s art and Nalty’s colors. It’s a moody book, with limited colors and heavy shadows. While I’m sure I could argue the art isn’t perfect in a technical sense — look too closely and the brush strokes start to look haphazard, backgrounds are over-simplified — none of it detracts from the work nor is it incongruous. In fact, it adds to the otherworldly feel of the bog at night, as if everything is out-of-focus and impossible to fix our eyes on for long.
Furthermore, the paneling and framing is absolutely brilliant.
My favorite panels of “Bog Bodies” are the ones where Cowles’ lettering takes us the bulk of the vertical space, leaving the focal point of the panel tiny and swallowed up by the words and the environment: a car on a lonely road, a young man alone in the open bog, Gerry at the bottom of a cliff. There’s a palpable sense of loneliness that is pervasive elsewhere but overwhelming in these moments. Cowles’ lettering is, as always, a treat to read and I breathe a sigh of relief everytime mixed case lettering looks as good as it does here. That choice also provides the opportunity to contrast Maureen’s constant yelling with the rest of the cast without having to resort to a different font, bolding everything or always using larger font size.
Continued belowThere is, however, one glaring problem with “Bog Bodies” — we’re given a two act book for a three act story. The pacing of the book is impeccable for much of its page count; slow, methodical, and ratcheting up the tension as to whether or not Killian can escape his fate. However, the ending is rushed and it’s hard to feel that there shouldn’t have been more pages. The arc of the story itself ended mostly where it should have, with the inevitable death of Killian and Neev’s own realization of her lot in life, but the pace of the preceding pages do not support the location of that event.
The pacing issues start when Gerry shows up again. His, Keano, and Killian’s conversation feels rushed and packed in compared with the rest of the issue. Reading the pacing of the book, Gerry’s appearance should be the equivalent of the start of the third act, which leaves the book with a rather long second act, as the first act ends with Killian’s discovery of Neev in the woods.
It’s not unusual for a three act story to have a lengthy second act and a short third act but once Killian is shot, the story wraps up its loose ends rather neatly and quickly, without giving it the proper decompression that the rest of the story had. The event is supposed to be surprising in its suddenness but instead comes across as rushed, sandwiched between overly packed pages and an unsatisfying denouement. Part of this may be due to the choice to have a splash page not more than three pages prior, which throws the visual language of the comic into disarray.
Structurally, every splash page in the book acts as either the opening or closing of the book or an important turning point in the narrative: Killian’s final moment of innocence, finding Neev, Keano showing up at the cabin, the bog ghosts in Maureen’s cabin, and Killian being shot. The first and last of the list are not act ending moments but instead, to continue using act structure theory, the inciting incident and climax respectively, with finding Neev the end of act one, Keano showing up the end of act two, and the bog ghosts being coded as an act ending moment without the proper set-up.
Let’s assume, however, this isn’t meant to be a three act story but instead a four act one. In either case, the tension between where the story’s pacing places the start of act three — Gerry’s re-appearance, and where the structure does, Maureen’s bog ghosts, is not irreconcilable, though it does harm the final third of the book, but in the case of a four act work, it is the location, rather than the presence, of that additional splash page that makes the entire ending less impactful. Because only three pages separate the climax and the end of act three, it’s as if the entire ending is cut short. Apropo of how Killian goes out, yes, but unsatisfying in execution, especially with the denouement being twice as long yet someone still too short.
Finally, there’s also little resolution for Neev and her purpose in the story, other than to be someone to have Killian chat with and to be the personification of his guilt as well as visual foreshadowing for how he was to go out. She is established as being external to Killian, though only he and Maureen can see her, and thus has her own narrative trajectory, yet there are never any more details on what she subconsciously wants. Revenge? To see the man who killed her suffer? Or to have him atone?
The final act would have been the perfect place to explore that, and with the content of the splash page, would have made narrative sense. Instead, we get an equally fitting but rushed end. The three pages between act ending and climax are a beautifully done scene, and the same is true for the final few pages, but as a whole, they leave me wanting more, and not in a good way.
I don’t want to end this review on a negative, however.
Shalvey, Fullerton, Nalty and Cowles have constructed a book worthy of the praise it’s received, even if the ending was compressed. The characters remain rich and the story’s limited scope allows for a focused tale about gangsters, ghosts and the dangerous consequences of youthful mistakes. The title informs the narrative at every turn and this is a book I can see people doing close readings of in the future. “Bog Bodies” is an imperfect tale, yes, but we are not out on the bog; such a misstep isn’t enough to sink it beneath the peat.
