My Bookshelf
Noir: A Crime Comics Collection
One of the few collections of crime comics ever released, 2009’s Noir: A Crime Comics Collection must have caused at least some ripples because, despite being black & white and the skimpiness of original paperback edition’s size, it was brought it back in a full comics-size hardcover version in 2020, with a brand new cover.
It doesn’t really matter which edition you score, though, or even that a few of the stories don’t quite pull their weight–if you’re into crime comics, it’s worth every red penny you blow on it. This is simply a staggering selection of some of the the very best in crime comics, mostly indies, over the last few decades.
For me, it was an eye opener. Sure, some of these stories aren’t really noir at all, and some of the stories are barely stories at all (some of them come off as teasers for the creators series, more than anything), but when they hit, they hit hard, and generally nasty, and hard, and most of these hit. It featured thirteen stories of betrayal and deceit, bad choices and bad luck, written and illustrated by such masters of crime comics as Brian Azzarello, Gary Phillips, Jeff Lemire, the dynamic duo of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Dean Motter, David Lapham and more. Most of them I was already really familiar with, but there were a few pleasant surprises, nonetheless.
COMICS
- NOIR:
(2009, Dark Horse Comics)
Writers: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Ed Brubaker, Dean Motter, Chris Offutt, Alex de Campi, M.K. Perker, Paul Grist, Rick Geary, Ken Lizzi, Gary Phillips
Artists: Jeff Lemire, Dean Motter, M.K. Perker, Paul Grist, Kano, Stefano Gaudino, Hugo Petrus, Joëlle Jones, Eduardo Barreto, Sean Phillips, Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon- “Stray Bullets: Open the Goddamn Box”
Writer and artist: David Lapham - “The Old Silo”
Writer and artist: Jeff Lemire
- “Mister X: Yacht on the Styx”
Writer and artist: Dean Motter - “The Last Hit”
Writer: Chris Offutt
Penciller: Kano
Inker: Stefano Gaudiano - “Fracture”
Writer: Alex De Campi
Artist: Hugo Petrus - “The Albanian”
Writer and artist: M. K. Perker - “Kane: The Card Player”
Writer and artist: Paul Grist - “Blood on My Hands”
Writer and artist: Rick Geary - “Trustworthy”
Prose story with illustrations
Writer: Ken Lizzi
Artist: Joëlle Jones - “The New Me”
Writer: Gary Phillips
Artist: Eduardo Barreto - “Lady’s Choice”
Writers and artists: The Fillbach Brothers - “Criminal: 21st Century Noir”
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Sean Phillips - “The Bad Night”
Writer: Brian Azzarello
Artists: Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
- “Stray Bullets: Open the Goddamn Box”
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
