A comiXologist Recommends (a crime comic)

Dark Corridor #6 by Rich Tommaso (Image Comics)

I love crime.  Not actual crime, that would be horrible, but the crime genre, which has long provided a fertile ground for artists, both as an exploration for the act of crime itself, and as a jumping off point to explore themes and ideas that tie in with criminality and its opponents.  This has resulted in a rich field of varied works, from the shadowy film noir of Nicholas Ray and Jacques Tourner in the 40s and 50s to the neon tinged, ultra-slick procedurals of William Friedkin and Michael Mann in the 1980s, from the intricate con games of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley to tough-as-nails Harlem detectives in the books of Chester Himes, and beyond, to the true crime stories in the films of Errol Morris and in books like Helter Skelter and In Cold Blood, the fictionalized accounts of real life crime in the books of Joyce Carol Oates, hyperreal tales of crime fighting and investigation in comics like Batman and Judge Dredd, and noir influenced comics like The Fade Out and Stray Bullets.

As a connoisseur of crime, I’m also a critic.  It’s not enough to ape the aesthetic of other successful crime stories, a creator has to bring something new into the mix, something of their own.  One of the most individualistic creators working in crime comics today is Rich Tommaso, a brilliant artist and writer who has a firm grasp on both the tradition of the crime genre and how to infuse it with his own unique, creative voice.

His most recent work is Dark Corridor, published by Image Comics.  In Dark Corridor, Tommaso weaves together several intricate and connected storylines involving numerous colorful characters, not entirely unlike the aforementioned Stray Bullets, or the novels of Elmore Leonard, but the whole of the book far exceeds the sum of its influences.  Tommaso moves smartly from stark, stylized violence to deep, involving character development to near hallucinatory setpieces (such as the haunted house ride sequence in the most recently issue) with assuredness.  Never do these variations in tone betray the totality of the work as a whole.  Dark Corridor is the work of an artist with a vision, and deserves a place among the pantheon of great crime comics.

Harris Smith is a senior production coordinator and the editor of comiXology’s Tumblr.  He’s never been caught.