In 1984 a dead body appeared in Pelican Road and everybody’s lives are changed, but who’s to blame for the death guy? Well, that’s what this story is about.
Cover by Sean PhillipsBy Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
Colors by Jacob PhillipsA boarding house full of druggies. A neglected housewife. A young girl who thinks she’s a superhero. A cop who wants to be left alone. And a private detective looking for a runaway girl. These stories collide one fateful summer in WHERE THE BODY WAS, a tale of love and murder in the suburbs, told from a dozen different points of view. All the neighbors on the block have an opinion about the murder and how it happened, but which of them is telling the truth?
WHERE THE BODY WAS is a tour-de-force from grandmasters ED BRUBAKER and SEAN PHILLIPS. Starting with a map of the crime scene, this murder mystery follows the ripples of this killing as they echo through decades of love and loss and passion and violence. Like a true crime podcast crossed with a long-lost diary, WHERE THE BODY WAS is unlike anything BRUBAKER & PHILLIPS have ever done and a must-have for all their avid fans!
In this occasion I must say that the whole premise for this book, is a lie, the copy and the cover of the book (and by extension, the authors and Image) want you to believe that this is a murder mystery with many suspects, at first I even thought that this was some kind of interactive comic-book where the reader was more involved, we even have a map and a list of characters before the story begins… in truth, that is not what “Where the Body Was” is, but I do agree that this is a tour-de-force and a new approach from legends Brubaker and Phillips, who are one of the few creative teams remaining that can do whatever they want without worrying for budgetary constraints.
This book follows the story of the people living in Pelican Road, mainly around and old boarding house, and it tells many stories intertwined between each other, it uses many narrative elements that vary from the usual first or third-person narration that Ed Brubaker uses depending on the book.
We see direct interventions from the main characters on a documentary-like approach where they talk to us without a middleman, there’s no reporter who they are talking to, in fact, we see them talk to us in different moments of time.
The way the story is told reminds me of the work of Richard Linklater (say, Dazed and Confused) and in what was a surprise to me, relies on dark humor, a first in Brubaker and Phillips, at least in contrast with everything I’ve read from them before; and I’m not saying that there weren’t humorous elements in previous books, in fact they are masters of tragic irony, but it is way more palpable in this tale, moreover, the epilogue is a full blown comedic scene similar to what you could see in Coen brothers movie.
Brubaker gives depth to every character and every story, if this was a regular comic coming out monthly, we would probably have one different story per issue, but I think that this story works better because of because of the tight intertwining between every plot.
We have the “classic” stories that you can expect in a book from this creative team, like the young delinquents of the tough guy, but here we have heavy differences, one of the most notorious is the character of Palmer, who could be a stereotypical rowdy, instead we discover that he’s using the badge of his late father to pretend to be a cop and make life a little bit easier.
Continued belowThere are also key details in what is not told directly like the story of Ranko that surely is tragic, and how he is being used by his psychiatrist. Another great example is Lila, she’s an eleven-year-old Vietnamese girl, which means she was born when the Vietnam War was raging and is probably a refugee, isolated from a world where everyone sees her as a nuisance at best and a danger at worse.
Jacob really shines in his coloring; he was added to the team at around the same time they began doing OGN’s and he has been growing in his ability with every book. If you contrast this story with “Night Fever,” you could see that the previous one was more subjective, kind of “coloring outside the lines,” here we have a more realistic approach but still with gorgeous blocks of light of dark and teals, depending on the situation that comes close to a watercolor feel.
As it’s now customary, Brubaker and both Phillips are operating on another level, their own category, they reached new heights ever since they starter their OGN era in 2018 with “My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies,” the new format gave them inspiration for new stories. This is a complex work that uses many characters to tell different stories, different depths and themes around the same tragedy. There’s a brief scene in the future with Tommy at the end, that just breaks your heart, and closes the main theme of this book: what happens in the past, good and bad, makes what you are in the present.
Oh, and who killed the PI? Well that’s the thing, there was no killing this time, what a twist for a Brubaker/Phillips book, am I right?
