By Tom DeFalco, Greg Scott, Janice Chiang & Art Lyon coloured by Anne-Marie Ducasse, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Dark Circle Comics/Archie)
No ISBN: Digital edition
At the height of America’s Film Noir era of the early 1950s – and following the game changing emergence of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer in 1947 – comics concocted a flurry of lonely, tarnished knights. Like their literary and cinematic equivalents, they solved crimes and unravelled mysteries employing varying degrees of excessive violence, street savvy and frankly a high degree of manly misogyny.
We’ll be seeing the prime offender in action at the end of this week and I’ll be back with Hammer’s greatest disciple – Johnny Dynamite – in the not too distant future. Today, though, it’s the turn of a revived reincarnation of one of the gumshoe’s earliest imitators.
Swiftly moving to exploit the trend, recently rechristened Archie Comics (nee MLJ) launched sidebar imprint Close-Up, Inc. to carry the semi-sordid shenanigans of titular tough guy Sam Hill.
That series (boasting five or more adventures per comic) ran to seven issues in 1951 before shutting down until another century. The writer(s?) remain undisclosed to this day, but the majority of the casebook was illuminated by company A-Lister Harry Lucey (Archie, Betty & Veronica, The Hangman, Madame Satan).
For more broadminded modern times, the character was revived by Archie’s modern mature reading imprint Dark Circle. Enjoying a very contemporary setting and milieu, the enquiry agent is reinvented by scripter Tom DeFalco (Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, Fantastic Four, Spider-Girl, The Phantom), illustrator Greg Scott (X-Files, Area 51, Black Hood, Steve McQueen, Wolverine), colourist Art Lyon & letterer Janice Chiang also suffered from company hesitancy, and the presumably traditional print-designed tales ultimately surfaced as a digital only compilation. Thankfully, the material itself is eminently readable genre fare that fills a gap between mature material like Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’ Criminal, Jason Aaron & R.M. Guéra’s Scalped or Azzarello & Risso’s 100 Bullets and all-ages crimebusting fare such as Max Allan Collins’ CSI comic adaptations, Marvel’s Cops: The Job (Larry Hama, Joe Jusko & Mike Harris) or Robert Loren Fleming & Ernie Colón’s Underworld from DC.
So, in the cosy manner of a post-watershed TV show, ‘The Case of the Willful Widow’ sees a now late middle-aged veteran sleuth hired to discreetly retrieve a sex-tape lost by or stolen from recently bereaved cougar Mrs. Clare Wentworth.
Offering no judgement, Sam scrupulously swears not to watch it before checking out family members who might profit from Clare’s public humiliation: accumulating a few suspects in the husband’s murder, and soon finding all leads point to lethal and grudge-bearing old adversary Philip “Big Marco” Marconi…
It’s not long before this poking around confirms that there’s a double cross in play, no one is telling the truth and that Hill is marked for murder… again…
After skilfully avoiding that trap, Hill and secretary assistant Molly Barsdale relax until life gets hectic again when notorious District Attorney Nathan Geller blows his brains out. ‘The Case of the Purged Politician’ latterly exposes the playboy politico’s corrupt connections to Big Marco and results in Hill being hired to shadow the DA’s successor amidst rumours that his entire staff were on the take…
Bullets replace flying accusations and more bodies drop, and just who is clean becomes a moot point when Sam’s cop buddy Detective Rufus Stack is forced to act on behalf of the city police chief who hates Hill’s guts. When another motive becomes embarrassingly clear, the true cost of power politics is apparent to all…
Sleazy glamour seizes the Private Eye’s attention in ‘The Car, the Chorus Girl and the Killers’ with Sam paid to find missing showgirl Jenna Ray DeCarlo. Gleefully checking out nightclubs, the suave shamus learns that other, far shadier guys are also seeking her…
Once again he’s stepped on the toes of Marconi and – crucially – his heirs. Oddly, Sam’s client – mob-accountant Mr Mopely – seems more eager to locate her car than his latest squeeze, and when he’s found executed in the traditional manner, Sam realises Jenna wasn’t missing but hiding…
Big changes are happening in the Marconi family, and when what everyone is looking for falls into Hill’s unwilling hands, the P.I. is hunted by the cops and the robbers…
Set square ‘In the Crosshairs’ the investigator goes on the run but doesn’t escape unscathed, (prompting an easter egg guest-shot for Archie’s own medical hero as originally seen in Young Doctor Masters) and a spectacular trap and showdown that offers no conclusion but just a precarious détente…
Stylish, smart, sassy and classy, Sam Hill: In the Crosshairs delivers plenty of action and comfortable crime drama to please any genre fan, with DeFalco’s steadfast tributes to past glories and mob fiction superbly realised by Greg Scott’s slickly atmospheric yet understated art.
© 2015 Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.