Deep Cuts #1: Killer Cross-Rhythm

In a visual medium like comics, which lacks an audio component, it cannot be easy to convey sounds like music to the audience. Formalist techniques can be attempted to capture the tones, but they can never totally replicate the experience of hearing a song or set. A book like Scott Pilgrim tried to showcase the music through guitar chord sheets (like the ones you’d find on Ultimate Guitar) in the gutter of pages. This, combined with an editor’s note that showed the chord charts developed an interactive that ensured anyone with a guitar (or computer to play the chords) could attempt to recreate the sound from the page.  

Deep Cuts #1 – written by Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark, with art by Danilo Beyruth, colors from Igor Monti, and letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou – is a series that makes a similar attempt to bring music to the page, opening the story of Charles Stewart, a young clarinet player searching for a place to play his music and learn more about his father. He uses a tuned-in ear to search for his literal window into the music industry, finding an in thanks to Jack Cartier, a trumpeter with an eye always towards the next gig. Jack gets Charles a job at the Maison Cerise, a brothel focused on serving sailors off duty, the two playing with the Professor, an experienced musician who likes Charles’s skills. 

Charles falls into a rhythm, taking the name Ace to play the brothel, splitting his time between playing the venue and working his day job, trying to scrape by. After fights between sailors put heat on the Cerise, the local is forced to close, and Charles gets the opportunity to play an original song inspired by Dixie, one of the women working in the brothel. It’s also revealed that Jack was skimming Charles’s wages and only leaving the tips, having left for the next gig, which can lead him to play the big shows, like steamboats. 

The betrayal comes with the additional revelation that the Professor used to play with Charles’s father, never connecting the man with his son. The Professor explains the difference between Jack and Charles in that Jack is always chasing the perfect set and searching for the next show. He describes it’s not bad, necessarily, but it’s the safe option. However, it is lacking compared to playing in the moment, letting the song’s flow, imperfections, and all, create a unique experience. The safe option doesn’t always mean safe wither, as Jack learns when his ambition catches up to him and keeps him from moving up in the music world. Charles gets an opportunity thanks to this and plays with Johnny Two-Fingers, forgoing a perfect set. 

The issue, in its essence, takes that philosophy of working at the moment and plays it to significant effect. After Higgins’s work in the big genre stories of the Radiant Black titles, the return to a more grounded, character-driven story is a treat. The cadence he and Clark infuse into every panel is palpable from page one, creating a rich tapestry of music and vibrance in this New Orleans. After the first page with a full-page image, the duo immediately dive into the music, its place on the page working as a guide for Charles. It’s woven into the fabric of this interpretation of New Orleans and is noticeable when not on the page. 

The perfect example of how essential it is is on page two, as five symmetrical, wide panels work like staves of music to generate the rhythm of this opening. The first, fourth, and fifth include the music guiding Charles, while the second and third lack it and focus on dialogue or other sounds. The way Beyruth composes this page makes clear there is an underlying tempo, a pulse, to the story that always puts the music first but never forgets the people of New Orleans. 

The page ends with a close-up of Charles, revealing his face for the first time as he shuts his eyes and listens. Everything is blacked out except for the music, filling his senses and centering his focus. The next page picks up on this by maintaining the same structure, rearranging the order of the panels, but keeping the same elements to create a new tune. It isn’t until the next page that the rhythm changes as Charles reaches his destination, finding the source of the music he’s been searching for. Beyruth uses a solid black background, but this time illustrates Charles with eyes open and a look of determination. Even the coloring of the music, created by Monti’s use of a greenish hue interrupting the inky black, breaks from the typical yellows of the music notes. 

The juxtaposition of these representations of music, joined in by Otsmane-Elhaou’s lettering of Charles’s playing, creates a rich visual soundscape, ensuring that the tones feel different even if they can’t be heard. When the story shifts out of the city and into the surrounding neighborhoods, the music changes too, Otsmane-Elhaou lettering in a style that puts the sounds in balloons and black letters, setting it apart from the background of the panels. The music invades this area, not embedded in it like in New Orleans. That sense of music doesn’t return until the band marches back into town, the staved notes guiding the parade to a new geographic location.

The next time the music weaves itself into the fabric of the art and setting is Charles’s first performance in the Cerise, as the creative team shows the transition from one style of playing to another. The sequence starts with notes employed like SFX before shifting back to Charles’s balloons, which is not quite a fit in this club. After he begins to play and gets the hang of the rhythm, the page changes, and the notes organically weave into the background. However, they are not the concise, clean version from the opening pages but instead are charged with a raw sense of energy thanks to the vibrant line work and explosive use of color. It’s new, moving, and captures the moment-to-moment of playing that feels like an explosion of sound.