Joe Hill has been a familiar name in comics and literature, having written his fair share of horror in novels and a critically acclaimed comic series in “Locke and Key”. Now, the popular writer has returned to IDW with a crime tale to tell, and with Martin Simmonds in tow, it’s sure to be a pretty one. But does this feel like the fresh, innovative content crime fiction needs, or does it fall short?
Written by Joe Hill
Illustrated by Martin Simmonds
Colored by Martin Simmonds and Dee Cunniffe
Lettering by Shawn LeeComedy is Hard… but Dying is Easy! The debut of an all-new creation by Joe Hill (Locke & Key) and Martin Simmonds (Punks Not Dead)! Meet Syd “Sh*t-Talk” Homes, a disgraced ex-cop turned bitter stand-up comic turned… possible felon?! In part 1 of Dying is Easy, Carl Dixon is on the verge of comedy superstardom and he got there the dirty way: by stealing jokes. He’s got a killer act, an ugly past, and more enemies than punch-lines. So when someone asks Syd Homes how much it would cost to have Dixon killed, Syd isn’t surprised in the slightest. He’s already got a figure in mind…
One thing you can tell right off the bat is that Hill knows his way around good dialogue. We’re thrown into the comic as an ex-cop-turned-comedian Syd Holmes delivers his lukewarm routine. We’re immediately placed setting-wise in the nineties, however, just by the little inflections in Syd’s dialogue, like the shortening of words, or his snappy, lightly aggressive back and forth between characters like Felix and the bartender. Considering that a little more than the first half of this comic takes place in the same bar, this could’ve wound up pretty boring if Hill didn’t make the conversations interesting, but Hill proves himself as a veteran scribe by including neat little plot twists and developments in everyone’s side of the conversation, which is only supported by the visuals. This light back and forth does take a darker turn later, interestingly, as in the process of beating up his rival Carl Dixon, Carl imitates his own dialect and speech patterns eerily back to him. It’s a clever use of speech and giving Syd an instantly identifiable voice is what makes this work so well.
My problem then is that Syd Holmes is instantly despicable. From the first scene which details his stand up routine, he already makes a number of sexist jokes within the first three panels. He then continues later off stage to converse with his friends about how ‘dried up’ a female TV producer and how hard it must be for a guy to “get it up for that”. I get that this is in the nineties which was replete with problematic content, but it does feel like it’s leaning a little too hard into that source material. Regardless of this, Hill seems to be directly setting us up to hate Syd Holmes considering that all of this is established early on. If we look at the situation in a purely objective manner, Hill is cleverly putting us in a tricky situation: you hate Syd Holmes, his content is depressing, and his treatment of everyone other than himself is pretty horrible, yet you know in the context of this issue that he did not murder anyone. Hill cleverly twists expectations in a way that makes us want to read more, yet makes characters so horrible and hard to read at times that you have to question how much the payoff is worth.
Simmonds has a lot of work to carry in this issue that involves so much talking heads within one confined space, yet manages to do so with aplomb. The opening of this text uses the classic nine-panel grid that has been brought back to popularity by 2018’s “Mister Miracle” much in the same way that text did, through the use of talking heads. Only in this case, Simmonds manages to make each panel look unique and represent both positive and negative aspects of Syd’s personality. When Syd cracks his ‘joke’ about “getting knocked into a big pile of tits”, his expression is clearly sexualized and incredibly male gaze-y, which leans heavily into this idea that this is a character we’re supposed to hate. Yet when talking about how murder can often be without rhyme or reason, Simmonds paints him a lot weaker in his overall body language, and his expression conveying much more remorse and depression than the page beforehand. This strong use of body language combined with facial acting is what Simmonds does best, and he continues this trend throughout the whole book on each character.
Continued belowA subtler touch that I really enjoyed is that throughout the issue, Simmond structures each page and panel camera angle more and more like we’re in a hazy bar slowly getting inebriated with the characters. After Syd’s routine, we see him sit down with his two friends, with one particular panel framing them from the front on a perfectly horizontal table and each of them being rendered clearly with clean-lined art. As the story pushes forward, we see slight lapses in how the scene is portrayed, like having Syd’s hairline start to blur together with the background at one stage, or having the lights seem to viscerally bear down on Felix’s drunk state whenever the focus is on him. Once we leave the bar setting, Simmonds really goes wild with his distorting of perspective. The setting blurs between clarity and haziness, characters pop out from nowhere with elongated shadows and wildly strained expressions, before letting loose with a complete montage of Syd beating up Carl in a panel set up like an elaborate ballroom dance guide. It’s a clever way to give readers a sense that both they and the characters within the story are losing control, which in turn makes us further immersed.
The colors here, provided also by Simmonds with assists from Dee Cunniffe, are visceral in their storytelling, using the bright neon lighting of bars and general big-city nightlife effectively. I love that the opening has a soft spotlight on Syd that makes him look almost messianic, with a halo of light across his hairline, which ties in well with his own routine’s content. Further, once we get to the scene of Syd sitting at the table with his friends, each of them is cast in a different hue, with the aggressive purple light lending to Syd’s avaricious mood, the dark, cold blues evoking his friend’s assassination-driven thoughts, and Felix feeling like a mix of the two thanks to his drunken state. The outside setting is interestingly colored too, using a much more intense, hyperrealistic color palette that gives the confrontation with Syd’s old colleague and Carl a much more dreamlike, euphoric tone. The whole book carries this psychedelic nature to it, yet it is so well emphasized here to really throw readers off.
“Dying Is Easy” is in some ways a crass, blatant and uncomfortable text, yet there is plenty of subtle storytelling beats present here that it feels well crafted and interesting. As much as I find the protagonist Syd to be incredibly off-putting and despicable, I can’t argue that he seems to intentionally be that way and makes the story much more layered because of this. Simmonds’ art, with color supports from Cunniffe, is evocative of the sleazy yet hyperreal big-city nightlife, and perfectly fits the beautifully flawed tone of the story. It might not be for everyone, but this is a crime story worth checking out.
Final Score: 7.9 – A complex crime story that while visually stunning and narratively complex, can leave readers feeling a little uneasy.
