Spencer & Locke TPB: Funny Pages Noir

This is basically what you would get if you mixed Calvin & Hobbes with Sin City; a dark twisted tale told from the point of view of a grown man solving crimes with an anthropomorphic blue panther.

Complete with comic strip inspired flashbacks full of Locke’s childhood traumas seen thru the filter of childhood imagination and gritty brutal violence as he and Spencer try to solve their current mystery, the death of Locke’s childhood girlfriend; this series was a great fusion of two very different genres (3 in you count the drug induced space adventure).

The story kicks of with the mystery and suspense you would expect from a classic crime noir and the action continues to build as the mystery unravels but I feel later issues suffered slightly from being too filled with twists which lessened the impact of the story but still added a couple interesting surprises.

The art for the series was interesting in the fact that it would seamlessly transfer from a comic strip style for a quick flashback into the more modern crime comic book style used for the main storyline. I feel the art excelled in the third issue where Locke is imaging himself as a space adventurer-type character he had created as a child as the issue was mostly done in a style more familiar to a superhero book than a crime drama.

This series was full of dark, gritty fun done with an interesting combination of two dissimilar genres. I can’t wait to see where the story goes in Volume 2 expected this winter.