Created by Matt Kindt & Jason Hall
“Mitch, if you’re going to be a good detective, you’ve got to be aware of your surroundings at all times. It’s really about observation. . . paying attention to detail, always alert. That means keeping your eyes and ears open. . . especially to the little things.”
— Yellow Peril to Mitch
“But here I am, with smoke in the air and blood on the floor.”
– Pistol Whip
True confessions time: I hadn’t even heard of this post-modern, shape-shifting riff on hard-boiled detective fiction until Chris Gumprich dropped a dime.
It may not be for everybody, but this head-spinning three-part saga is some kinda adventure–it stomps the same metafictional turf as Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy… although it’s at times darker and trickier and definitely trippier.
It all kicks off with Pistolwhip Presents Mephisto And The Empty Box (2001), a prequel which seems to have little to do with anything that follows–except it does in an odd way, setting a style and tone and introducing characters and settings that will reverberate through the next two installments, Pistolwhip (2001) and Pistolwhip: The Yellow Menace (2003).
It’s the 1930s (1940s? 1950s?), and flapjack loving MITCH PISTOLWHIP is a bellhop with big dreams of becoming a private eye. Not that he has any real training or skills–he just thinks it would be a better job. So when he finds a wallet stuffed with cash, he buys a gun, a new suit and a new apartment. He mooches an office in the back of a friend’s dockside boat repair shop and gets his buddy Half Step to print out a private detective ID.
Pretty soon he’s stumbling and bumbling his way through a series of interconnected (often barely) scenes that wander and weave all over the place, stretching time like an elastic, and occasionally folding back onto themselves. As do most of the characters, who seem to morph into other characters occasionally.
And then back again.
In Pistolwhip (2001), the rookie P.I. finds himself bumping up against cute-as-a-button would-be femme fatale Charlie Minks. Also on hand: monkeys, pirates, hotel dicks, jazz singers, magicians, musicians, gangsters, love-struck cops, circus freaks, superheroes and super-villains, and an anti-comics crusader. It all takes place in a cold, hard unnamed city, where nobody quite connects with anyone else–they just seem to keep running into each other. The whole town seems marinated in loneliness, alienation, and random connections. It doesn’t make much sense (at least to me), but it sure was fun, as the writers played mix-and-match with some of my favorite tropes.
And by the third story arc, Pistolwhip: The Yellow Menace (2003), the pieces finally start to fit together, as Mitch teams up with a man who may (or may not) be costumed crimefighter Jack Peril (star of radio, movie serials, pulps and comics), who is hot and the trail of a criminal mastermind, and if in the end there’s no true conclusion to any of the character’s stories, there is a disjointed, vague closure of a sort, a little troubling, but also somehow satisfying. I ended up loving it, even if I’m still not sure why.
Perhaps it was Kindt’s loopy, slapdash artwork, which never lets you forget this is a comic, as bold strokes fly off a face or even slightly out of a panel, or stop and start, leaving Mitch’s perpetual cigarette to seemingly float in space, perhaps suggesting reality–even of the fictional kind–can not constrained by any box. A more precise, structured style may have come off as serious and pretentious, but this loosy-goosey, playful approach suits the mood perfectly.
And that sense of giddiness is further played out in a mishmash of comic-book pages (sometimes seemingly random), radio show scripts, film clips and other visual flotsam. The back pages of collected edition even allow Kindt and Hall to show off the vast amount of promotional “curiosities” that they originally created to try and entice potential publishers: period-perfect trading cards, calendars, paper dolls, a city map and even a pamphlet entitled “Understanding Pistolwhip,” that allegedly clarifies everything.
It doesn’t. Not really. But it is fun.
I dunno. Pay more attention? Maybe take notes? Read it again?
Like I said, not for everyone. There are a slew of online comments from people who wanted to like it:
“I’m not quite sure I got it, though I still enjoyed the book as a whole.”
“I just couldn’t follow this. I mean, I sorta could, sorta couldn’t. I think maybe there’s more happening here than I got, but maybe not. Or at least, not enough that I care to give it another shot.”
“I gave it a shot, but, feh, I’m good.”
So then, this is a comic about a private eye and a dame and a radio super-hero, or possibly a comic about a comic about a private eye and a dame and a radio super-hero, and the blurry lines between the two.
And I won’t even mention the Human Pretzel.
Post-modern? Meta-fiction?
Whatever it is, it worked for me.
THE EVIDENCE
- “Right now there’s evil afoot, and I’m going to give it a size-eleven kick to the head.”
— Yellow Peril - Pistolwhip: “Are you saying Yellow Peril’s crazy?”
Charlie Minks: “Of course not, Pistolwhip. He’s fictional. Now the guy running around in the Halloween outfit? He’s nutty as a fruitcake.”
TRIVIA
- Pistolwhip was named one of Time Magazine‘s Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2001.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Matt Kindt is an American comic book writer, cartoonist, and graphic designer. His comic wor includes MIND MGMT and BRZRKR (written with Keanu Reeves, and as of this writing the first issue of which is the highest-selling single issue of the 21st century). Other comic work includes Dept. H, Revolver, 3 Story, Super Spy, 2 Sisters, and the futuristic private eye series Subgenre. His work has been published in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German. He currently lives in Webster Groves, Missouri.
Besides the critically acclaimed Pistolwhip series, originally published by Top Shelf Productions, Jason Hall‘s work includes The Hellboy Companion, Star Wars Tales, Clone Wars Adventures, Hellboy Animated, The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, and Crush, as well as Beware the Creeper, Justice League Adventures, and Batman Adventures (DC). His work has been nominated for two Harvey Awards and has been published in English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, and Filipino.
UNDER OATH
- “Good storytelling; strong, distinctive (and visually pleasing) graphics; and cool names like Charlie Minks and Jack Peril! What more could you ask for?”
—Jeff Smith
COMICS
PISTOLWHIP PRESENTS MEPHISTO AND THE EMPTY BOX
(2001, Top Shelf Productions)
Writers: Matt Kindt, Jason Hall
Art: Matt Kindt
A sorta prequel to the Pistolwhip series (or is it?)- PISTOLWHIP
(2001, Top Shelf Productions)
Writers: Matt Kindt, Jason Hall
Art: Matt Kindt - PISTOLWHIP: THE YELLOW MENACE
(2003, Top Shelf Productions)
Writers: Matt Kindt, Jason Hall
Art: Matt Kindt
COLLECTIONS
- The Complete Pistolwhip | Buy the graphic novel | Kindle/ComiXology it!
In color for the first time, this hardcover collects both series, along with the Mephisto and the Empty Box one-shot and a story from Dark Horse Happy Endings!
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. A big thanks for the lead from long-time op Chris Gumprich.
I haven’t read these since they first came out, but I recall enjoying PISTOLWHIP, not quite enjoying YELLOW MENACE, and not understanding MEPHISTO in the least. I suspect they’ll read better one after the other — I just need to figure out which box I stored them in.
I scored the collection, and read the stories in order (on one long ass flight), and much to my surprise, I really got a kick out them, especially as the pieces started to fit together. Did I understand everything? Nope. But it’s obvious these guys love the same crap I do, and I’ll bet they had as much fun creating it as I did reading it.