Monday, October 12, 2015

Books read in 2015: No. 26 -- Stray Bullets, Volume One: Innocence of Nihilism

by David Lapham

Started: Oct. 10
Finished: Oct. 12

Notes: Back in the '90s when indie comic books came into their own, I followed this one, Stray Bullets, for some little while. I remember it being a great noir story told across multiple timelines with some goofballness to it. Well, I ran across this collection of the first half dozen or so issues, and thought I'd check it out again, especially as I've been reading so much serious non-fiction of late and needed something of a break from it.

Mini review: Fine writing, but not quite as good as I remember, though I'm now looking at this tale with the eyes of a 40-something instead of a 20-something. The oddball aspects still worked for me, though sometimes I felt they streamed over into melodrama, sort of trying to be cool just for the sake of it. Also, whereas I had remembered these stories as flying along, now they seemed a bit slow to me; maybe that's because of my having read this before, or perhaps it shows my level of attention now in the Internet age. Still, over all, yeah, I could recommend this. Anyone wanting to get into some noir comics, this would be a great place to start, but be prepared for adult material.

1 comment:

Charles Gramlich said...

I've heard a lot of good stuff about this one but have never picked it up. I think part of if for me with graphic novels is the ratio of cost to story compared with prose novels.