NOCHE ROJA

Vertigo, DC Comics' edgier, "alt/indie" imprint, launched an ambitious albeit short-lived publishing experiment in 2009 with the debut of Vertigo Crime, a series of original black and white noir crime graphic novels, pitched at an adult readership. There were 13 books published from 2009 to 2011. I read my first one the other day.

NOCHE ROJA (RED NIGHT) by Simon Oliver and Jason Latour is a tale of crime and corruption along the United States/Mexico border. Young girls are being raped and murdered and Jack Cohen, an ex-cop (with a dark past) turned private detective, starts an investigation at the behest of a social worker. The victims are all workers at local maquiladoras but what's the real connection?

With plenty of plot twists and turns, a surfeit of sex and violence NOCHE ROJA is definitely not for kids. I give Oliver's story three stars but my biggest problem with this work is the artwork by Jason Latour. Latour's style is heavily influenced by manga (have I mentioned lately how much I hate manga?). It's cartoony, loose and sketchy. As if that wasn't bad enough, the pages are drenched in black ink. It's like Latour channeled the ghost of Vince Colletta's ink pot and spilled every drop on his drawing board. Yes, noir means black but come on guys, don't take it quite so literally. There are panels and pages in which it's impossible to tell what you're looking at because it's so damn black. A little light wouldn't have ruined the story because it's plenty dark to begin with. I'm not advocating complete sweetness and light, just a little more clarity please. Because of the constant murkiness, I have to give the artwork one and a half stars.

I don't know what the other entries in the Vertigo Crime series are like but as a big fan of noir crime fiction, I'm willing to give them a chance. After all, they can't all be this black, can they?