By Brian Michael Bendis (Image)
ISBN: 0-9853-2401-0
Jinx is a woman, a bounty hunter and an aspiring writer. Her boyfriend is a small-time thief and lowlife. They eke out their tawdry existence in the bleak urban hell of modern day Cleveland. And one day she lets herself get sucked into the hunt for three million dollars of dirty, bloody money. And that’s all the plot you’ll need for this savage crime comic noir, except the assurance that nothing this nasty ever ends well….
A flawed classic, this seminal sequel to AKA Goldfish (ISBN: 0-941613-85-2) is a dark, rough ride on the wild side as Brian Michael Bendis experiments with dialogue (often to the temporary detriment of the narrative), word balloon placement and starkly abrupt monochrome artwork in a compelling caper yarn.
In this complete compilation of a comicbook series so convoluted that even I’m not going to try and cover it here, there are pastiche 1970’s tribute comics, extremely (deliberately) overexposed photo-pages and lots and lots of balloons full of the kind of salty language any Scorsese or Tarantino fan would expect, and yes, sometimes that dialogue regrettably overwhelms the graphic sense. The art is raw and unpolished, immediate, very black and very white.
The harsh words and actions, pictures and protagonists are hard to accommodate, but that’s the point. This is an unsettling read about unpleasant people, and it works, completely. This shouldn’t be slick or polished, but it should be experienced.
© 1998, 2000 Brian Michael Bendis.