Where the Body Was: Streets of Mystery

One can understand a circuit to be a structure or form where a path or journey starts and stops at the same endpoint. In electricity, a circuit is a method for allowing power to flow into a device, as one may remember from a school science class. The concept can extend well beyond the boundaries of electrical engineering, and find its way into all manners of theory and thought exercises, including storytelling. 

What is Joseph Campbell’s monomyth but a circuit for heroic character development? Is it not a start and end at a similar point in space or time, whether it be physical or emotional? The notion of a narrative circuit is nothing new but feels original in the execution of the framework by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips’s newest graphic novel. Built around the discovery of a dead body, the book explores the possible culprits while putting the investigation on the back burner. 

Where the Body Was – written by Ed Brubaker with art and lettering by Sean Phillips, and coloring by Jacob Phillips – is a different approach to the recent output from the creative partnership. The book focuses on a street in the suburbs of California, weaving a tale of murder, toxic romances, and compelling motives. Where the graphic novel deviates is in its simplistic construction and interest in form over the story, thriving thanks to its impressive cast list and extension into the whodunit subgenre. 

The book is written from a seemingly future perspective, with its range of cast members speaking from times long past the events of 1984. The experimentation and spectacle come from the arrangement and form of the graphic novel, weaving in out of time and physical space to construct a linear narrative with interjections of hindsight. Brubaker’s scripting does this as an excellent way to interrogate the aching pains of nostalgia, challenging the romanticized nature of looking back fondly on childhood escapades and doomed relationships. 

Building itself out from a map of Pelican Road, circa 1984, the narrative’s geography becomes the catalyst for the story. The road in this book is an ouroboros, at the beginning and end of the tale, absorbing and paving the way for both the good and bad to come. Form gives way to function in this instance, and Phillips’s illustration of the map establishes an almost picturesque quality to the opening. This becomes an artistic red herring, luring the reader into a sense of security before quickly pivoting to the type of story one expects from the Brubaker, Phillips, and [Jacob] Phillips creative team. 

Beyond the simple execution of the map, a darkness and intricate circuit of messy complications lies under the surface of the map, haunting like the nervous system of a subway track; ever-present and around, just below the depth and hiding an entirely different world than the surface. 

This structure already feels like a classic set-up for a crime story, but the inclusion of a cast list right after the map recalibrates the expectations of a Brubaker/Phillips joint. If Night Fever was the creative team descending into the blinding darkness of an experimental neo-noir, then this is the formalistic play thriving in the verisimilitude of suburbia. 

Brubaker limits the flow of information and mostly reveals the information about the plot in a linear fashion. The issue makes the occasional jump into the near or far future, and Phillips masterfully renders these jumps. It is never unclear who is speaking, bridging time to interject bits of clarity or depth to the events of the book’s present. The linework here, even more so than in previous works, feels so timeless that there’s never a doubt in the unity of these depictions. Time may pass on for the characters, but the central circuit of Pelican Road remains steady under the direction of Phillips’s pencils. 

Much of that formal consistency, which is not a dig on the quality but speaks to a strong partnership of elements, is thanks to [Jacob] Phillips’s coloring. The palettes on display are more wistful than the typical hues from this creative team, playing in the shades of green and gold, brightening the setting of Pelican Road even as it hides its secrets. There are moments and flashes of the darker, cooler palettes from previous collaborations, but they always pass and return to their starting point. The opening map is an orienting element for the coloring as well, and it hangs like a reminder of what the book thrives in. 

There’s a real beauty in the backgrounds and tones that Phillips deploys through the story, and for moments, there is a strong desire to slip into the nostalgia the characters are experiencing. Smartly though, those impulses to reminiscence are cut short by the occasional splash of sharp color and darkness that remind us that the past should not be stripped of the rougher edges.