| Jinx
If you
have ever read anything by Brian Michael Bendis please raise
your hand. Now that almost 99% of the comic buying world has
raised their hands, put them back down on your respective
mouse.
Bendis
writes Marvel's Ultimate Spider-man and Image's incredibly
spectacular, always-groundbreaking superhero/cop drama Powers,
not to mention having written a plethora of other comics and
original stories. One of those original stories is Jinx,
written and drawn by Bendis himself.
Jinx is
the story of Jinx Alameda, a professional bounty hunter, and
David "Goldfish" Gold, a grifter and thief, and
the beginnings of their relationship. And boy howdy, are they
having a hard time going about it. Goldfish isn't exactly
being upfront about his criminal career, and Jinx isn't sharing
intimates either. Throw in Goldfish's unbalanced grifting
partner Columbia, a hunt for $3 million, and an old acquaintance
of Goldfish that sets his world on its ear, and you get an
action packed love story, told with the regular Bendis flair.
Bendis
is a great writer and it is most apparent in this book. He's
written several, pure crime genre comics (Torso, the
true story of America's first serial killer, and Goldfish,
about the same character that appears in Jinx, among
others) but Jinx stands out as his best.
Known
for his great touch with dialogue, Bendis often writes in
dialogue that is broken, full of slang, and always engaging.
Jinx and Goldfish both stumble over their words when trying
to describe themselves and their lives, because real conversation
rarely exhibits good grammar and complete sentences, and this
is something Bendis understands and does better than anyone
else in comics today. Hell, even the conversations between
random people in a certain scene are damnably interesting
(and one is just a little bit sexy. Weird sexy, but sexy).
Bendis
is also something of a decent artist. This being a crime genre
piece, he leans heavily on the inks and dark shadows, and
while his character designs on some of the bit players look
a little too similar, he has really fleshed out the characters
of Jinx, Goldfish and, Columbia, giving them individual looks,
facial expressions (Goldfish always looks like a hapless loser,
and from his facial expressions, he knows it) and even a unique
style of movement in the panels.
As far
as I'm concerned, Bendis is also the master of mixed media,
because he uses some interesting devices in his art. Bendis
uses several models for his character design, but beyond that,
puts their actual photos right into the book, just adding
dialogue.
He even
used some real life locations for backgrounds and such (and
in an article in the back of the book, he tells you how he
almost got arrested during the photo-shoot). Several full
sequences use only this Xerox-method, but it never feels out
of place alongside the standard pen-and-ink. All it does is
add another level of greatness to an already gorgeous story.
I love
this freaking book. It is an incredibly rich story, and I
don't mean just in content: this collection is over 400 pages
("Sweet Dr. Manhattan, that's thicker than Watchmen!"
said the astounded fanboy) and sports more special features
than a Super Special Gold Edition DVD version 1.5.
There
is a "Making of Jinx" section, penned by
Bendis himself, as he explains what it took to get Jinx done,
as well as sketches by Michael Avon Oeming that were to be
the basis of a Jinx animated series. A script for the
pilot episode of the aforementioned animated show appears,
as well pictures of some of Bendis' models, not to mention
an art gallery of Jinx art and pin-ups done by a multitude
of artists including: Dan Brereton, P. Craig Russell, Oeming,
Adam Warren, David Mack, and many others. It's like Bendis
threw a party and admission was a Jinx pin-up.
Image
has put together a nice looking volume for Bendis, and pricing
it at $25 is like selling the Mona Lisa for a dime and a song.
This is a book that should be in everyone's collection. Read
it, love it, and then use it's sheer bulk to book-end the
rest of your collection (unless you're one of those damn people
who has to alphabetize everything, damn collators!).
Jinx:
The Definitive Collection
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