{"id":30940,"date":"2024-11-19T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T09:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=30940"},"modified":"2024-11-18T18:40:33","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T18:40:33","slug":"the-drowned-girl-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2024\/11\/19\/the-drowned-girl-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Drowned Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Jon Hammer<\/strong> (Piranha Press\/DC)
\nNo ISBN: ASIN: B002KZ8ENI<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content <\/strong>produced during less enlightened times.<\/em><\/p>\n

During the \u201canything goes\u201d 1980s, the field of comics publishing expanded exponentially with new companies offering a vast range of fresh titles and ideas. To combat this upstart expansion, Marvel and DC instigated and commissioned innovative material for those freshly growing markets, with the latter cartoon colossus especially targeting readers for whom old-fashioned comic books were anathema… or at least a long-abandoned or clandestine dalliance. DC created new, mature-oriented imprints such as Vertigo and Helix, but some of the most intriguing projects came out of their Piranha Press sub-division, formed in 1989 and re-designated Paradox Press in 1993.<\/p>\n

When DC founded the adult special projects imprint, the resulting publications and reader\u2019s reaction to them were mixed. It had long been a Holy Grail of the business to produce \u201ccomics for people who don\u2019t read comics\u201d and, despite the inherent logical flaw, that\u2019s a pretty sound and sensible plan. However, delivery of such is always problematic.<\/p>\n

Is the problem resistance to the medium? Then try radical art and narrative styles, unusual typography and talent from outside the medium to tell your stories: you get some intriguing results but risk still not reaching a new audience whilst alienating readers already on board…<\/p>\n

This eclectic and overwhelmingly effective tome was one of the best and simultaneously – as all you cynics might expect – one of the least appreciated…<\/p>\n

Dick Shamus<\/em> lives in New York City. Not necessarily the one you know, but one equally composed of book snippets, flickers of films and TV titbits, all filtered through the fried brains of an incorrigible addict who\u2019s been off his prescription Lithium for far too long now.<\/p>\n

Dick Shamus is a Private Eye. If he says so then it\u2019s got to be true, right?<\/p>\n

On one night so much like every other, Dick, bombed out of his gourd on his tipple of choice – embalmers\u2019 formaldehyde with a chocolate drink chaser – picks up a useful tip about a Nazi weight-lifting club from one of his usual sources: far too few of them at all credible and none of them at all real. The drink might be the secret CIA vaccine to prevent AIDS, but it sure plays hob with the old deductive faculties…<\/p>\n

The side of the city that only he can see informs our weary, ravaged gumshoe that there\u2019s a connection between the Fascist health fanatics, India and the Drowned Girl – whoever she is. As his personal reality intercepts and continually collides with equally outrageous consensus realities the rest of us are stuck with, Dick is carried along by events to a tragic and disturbing rendezvous. If only he could recall who the client was…
\n\"\"
\nRaw and savagely beguiling, here is a one night odyssey of a perceptually challenged shamus weaving between rich bastards, gutter-scum, gullible art-trendoids, yuppie-gentrifiers and armchair anarchists. On the way he encounters affable protester-bashing cops and a hundred other \u201cnormal\u201d folks all in search of his dimly perceived targets – as anyone would…<\/p>\n

This disturbing, hard-luck pilgrim\u2019s progress is as truly thought-provoking, hard-bitten, revelatory and socially castigating as the best works of Dashiell Hammett, William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Raymond Chandler or Gabriel Garc\u00eda-M\u00e1rquez, whilst the brutally unrefined and intoxicatingly vibrant painting of author Jon Hammer (The Batman Adventures<\/strong>) makes this perhaps the very best psycho-detective graphic novel you\u2019ve never read.<\/p>\n

But all that could change if and when you too track down or dredge up The Drowned Girl<\/strong>…
\n\u00a9 1990 Jon Hammer. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jon Hammer (Piranha Press\/DC) No ISBN: ASIN: B002KZ8ENI This book includes Discriminatory Content produced during less enlightened times. During the \u201canything goes\u201d 1980s, the field of comics publishing expanded exponentially with new companies offering a vast range of fresh titles and ideas. To combat this upstart expansion, Marvel and DC instigated and commissioned innovative … <\/p>\n

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