Created by Jay Faerber
Can you turn it up to 11?
WEBSTER DODGE is a rockin’ young Seattle private eye, in his mid-to-late 20s, who’s not real big on authority figures, in Jay Faerber’s original graphic novel Dodge’s Bullets (2004).
Despite the fact that Faerber made his name with assorted spandex-clad mutants and teen titans, he’s evidently a real P.I. buff, and Dodge’s Bullets clearly reflects those influences, everything from Robert B. Parker’s Spenser to The Rockford Files, which, Faerber unashamedly admits, was “one of the best damn shows in the history of television.” In fact, Webster is a sorta rock’n’roll version of Rockford creator Stephen J. Cannell’s Richie Brockelman, a scruffier version with a bit more angst and edge; not above a sucker punch or a kick to the balls. Just about right for the new millenium.
And make no mistake–Webster is definitely a product of his age, living in an internet/cell phone/GPS world, struggling to make it as a P.I. after dropping out of the police academy–one day before graduation.
Suffice it to say that Daddy, a sergeant in the Seattle Police Department, was not pleased. But then, like I said, Webster has a slight problem with authority figures, and dear old dad’s number one on that list.
Not that Webster’s exactly setting the world on fire with his one-man detective agency–he works out of a booth at a local cyber café, with one of the waitresses acting as his unofficial secretary, taking messages and doing occasional online research. Fortunately Webster has another gig to help pay the bills, although that’s one’s not exactly lucrative either (and his dad isn’t too keen on that one either)–Webster plays in a struggling indie rock band (Cue “Free Electric Band” on turntable two).
In Dodge’s Bullets, Webster is hired by a client to find his long-lost father, who showed up in an Associated Press photo of a Seattle marathon. Of course, somehow the case goes sideways, and what initially looks like a simple missing persons case soon takes a few wicked bounces.
Good stuff.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jay Faerber is a writer of comic books and television. He got his start in comics working at Marvel and DC, and in 2001 launched Noble Causes, his first creator-owned series, at Image. Since then he’s co-created a number of series at Image, including Dynamo 5, Near Death, Graveyard Shift, Gemini, Point Of Impact, Copperhead, and Elsewhere. As a television writer/producer, he’s worked on such series as Ringer, Star-Crossed, Marvel’s Avengers Assemble, Zoo, and Supergirl. A lover of 70s & 80s PI shows, claims he’s wanted to write a private eye novel for as long as he’s wanted to write comics. The closest he’s come previously was a 10-page Jason Bard story, “The Mimic,” in a 2001 issue of The Batman Chronicles, which he says remains one of his favorite pieces of work. A convicted Canadaphile, he currently lives in Burbank. (Burbank? Yikes!)
COMICS
- DODGE’S BULLETS | Buy this book
(2004, Image)
80-page graphic novel
Black and white
Written by Jay Faerber
Art by James Francis
Cover by Tony Harris
THE DICK OF THE DAY
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Jay Faerber
The author’s official web site.
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
