“The Butcher of Paris” #1 sets up an interesting period premise, but packs too many characters and not enough refined art into this first issue to hit the ground running. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Written by Stephanie PhillipsCover by Dave Johnson
Illustrated by Dean Kotz
Colored by Jason Wordie
Lettered by Troy Peteri In 1944, as Swastikas flew over Paris, one of the most notorious and prolific serial killers in history turned the occupied city into his personal hunting ground. Under the guise of opportunity and freedom, a killer preys on those desperate to flee . . . until a gruesome discovery alerts the police. In a city on the brink of war, the hunt for a serial killer begins as a French detective races to catch the villain before the Nazis beat him to it.
“The Butcher of Paris” #1 tries to do a lot in a very strict page limit, and it doesn’t always work. The attempt is noble because we’re addressing several generations of comic readers who might not be familiar with the ins and outs of WWII-era France, but a successful first issue has to grip an audience from the first page and refuse to let go. “The Butcher of Paris” #1 lets go, unfortunately, by delving too deep in too many directions without enough honed art to back it up. What’s meant to be a punchy reveal at the end of the issue becomes too little, too late to keep our attention.
Phillips and Kotz work with an interesting concept, and one that could bear significant narrative fruit if done well. Setting up a serial killer in the fraught reality of Nazi-occupied Paris is a clever way to tell a story, and to get at the truth of this singular creature being the cherry on the top of genocide and terror. It’s also topical, as we’re currently obsessed with serial killers in popular media (again) but we don’t often stray further back in time beyond our beloved heavies of the 1960s and ‘70s. However, “The Butcher of Paris” #1 stumbles in its attempts to hook us because the book moves too quickly in trying to set up multiple storylines. There’s the establishing moment with the Gestapo agents, the sinister threat of the black market broker, the drama of the detectives and the intrigue of the informant. All of this is far too much to cover in 32 pages, and by the time we shift gears to bring the off-screen menace of the killer’s lair onto the page for the final reveal, we’re already bogged down in the details.
Kotz goes for a restrained line and realism, but the problem lies in the shading and heavier inking. Facial details are done with a heavy line – often almost as heavy as everything else on the page – that doesn’t allow the accents to do their job. Instead, everything appears to exist on one plane, which leaves most panels feeling flat and a bit more like abstract art than sequential action. Sinister Gestapo officers in the background of a panel boast heavy eyebrows, which is a good way to build mood, but the deep shadows on their jaws, costumes and even hands make them appear cartoonish and unrealistic. This breakdown in detailing is par for the course at times in backgrounds, as there’s only so much fine detail a panel or page can support, but it’s also present for main characters and in close-ups. Main characters are very difficult to tell apart. The final page before the splash ends in a panel with 8 characters, some holding precious objects, against the ornate backdrop of the mysterious killer’s home. All of that detail blends together to make a static, strange and ultimately unaffecting scene, and the page turn suffers as a result.
In addition, the straight-ahead layouts don’t support the terror necessary to make a book like this tick when the art cannot carry the story’s weight. The initial page is good, with its slightly off-kilter Eiffel Tower and moody chase scene, but the book quickly resolves into a series of tense conversations inside buildings. While Phillips and Kotz use these to try to illuminate the dawning terror of domestic urban life as the Nazis hunt down Jewish people, it instead becomes a bit of a trudge through a revolving door of characters who’re gifted a quick trait or two (the good detective, the tortured informant) before we’re whisked off to the next scene.
Continued belowWordie does a decent job with what’s possible here, but with Kotz’s shading and detailing there’s not much space for moodier colors that would help the grittiness of the story come to life. Instead, Wordie picks a pretty restrained palette and adds some nice washes and textures to single-color backgrounds – of which there are too many – and goes for a rich red during during the tense scene in the police station. The sickly green wall color featured later in the issue is a nice touch, and the shadow bleeding down into unassuming peach walls on the final page is another great example of what Wordie manages to do on a crowded and somewhat limited plane.
Peteri’s lettering is competent, although the font tends to fight Kotz’s line. There’s very little padding in the balloons – almost too little – but to add any more would risk covering some of Kotz’s compositions, so Peteri does what can be done. The thin balloon stroke makes the dialogue feel as though it’ll explode out of the balloon, and the effect is nice given the ornate speech. The veneer of culture and civility is exactly that, and this small detail gets to that tension. Sound effects are minimal – a slamming door, the whack of a cleaver – but done well and often borderless to help blend into the backgrounds.
Overall, “The Butcher of Paris” #1 boasts an intriguing premise and the seeds of a good story, but suffers significantly in its execution. Spareness in crime and horror is currency, and cutting down the cast and dialing back the art issues would help make the reading experience feel seamless, build the intended mood and allow us to sink back into a time much closer to the present than we’d like to admit.
Final Verdict: 5.5 – “The Butcher of Paris” #1 attempts to nestle the horror of a serial killer within the brutal landscape of Nazi-occupied France, but fails to build the mood and tension it needs to succeed.
