Gunning for Hits #4: Air of Danger

Martin hightails it out of the US to get away from his boss, who’s out for his blood after spending a ludicrous amount of the label’s money on two acts. Slade tries to manipulate the prodigious Billy in hopes of reviving his career. Billy’s girlfriend/manager is having none of it. Mill’s hatches a plan to get the scheming Barbossa out of the picture while putting out spot fires everywhere to maintain his Midas touch and shove his success right down everybody’s throats.

Who doesn’t love a great music bio? Can you feel that in the zeitgeist at the moment? Oscar wins and Netflix buzz is pushing tales of the music industry to the forefront. Treading the path that Phonogram, Punk’s Not Dead, and other musically flavored comics have paved part of, Gunning for Hits is dropping at the perfect time.

What better way to, in musical terms, get your demo heard……than to drench it in authenticity and insider knowledge. This is where Rougvie begins but it isn’t the only area he excels in. His writing continues to be first class. Character development and dimension is surround sound quality. Story beats, twists, turns, and progressions are produced as if Phil Spector, Butch Vig, and Dr. Dre were all turning knobs at the board. The real world feels and reactions, the board room maneuvers and idol worship all hit as if this issue is polybagged with a certificate of authenticity.

The way Rougvie crafts his story and unfolds all it’s layers barely requires the Mills-is-a-Hitman hook, but even that comes in after the bridge at the exact right moment. There’s so much happening at such a cracking pace in this issue, but it doesn’t feel like a coke-fueled escapade through a hotel room. It feels like a great album should, no filler. Nothing feels tacked on or too congested. It all serves the character, the plot, and the larger story.

The entire art team of Moritats layouts and lines, Noelle Raemer’s complimenting inks and Casey Silver’s colors and designs, all work in harmony to take Rougvie’s no doubt dense script and present it on a platter to make this a highly enjoyable reading experience.

The detail in Moritats pencils is seemingly stripped down to a minimalist style, more so than it was on All-Star Western, but just as it becomes reminiscent of some simplistic Mad Magazine type imagery, he hits you with beautiful renditions of the flat iron district or the bustling neon nightlife of Japan.

The performance he pours into his characters shouldn’t be overlooked. What they do with their body language tells as much of the story as the layout and panel structure, of which Moritat also finds creative ways to communicate even the most trivial moments.

The colors infuse late night to early morning recording studio sessions with all the cool ambiance and post AM exhaustion the story calls for. Japan pops with neo-technicolor explosion. Back alleys and city streets of a late ‘80s New York carry all the grit and foreboding energy they should in a story were sleaze and self-servitude is a character’s bread and butter. It’s a constant 1,2 of less is more and then more is more when more is needed, and it all works in synergy so that your eyes and imagination are never bored while reading.