Max Hamm
Fairy Tale Detective
by Frank Cammuso
This month
my book club chose graphic novels for our theme. The first one I picked up was
a tongue in cheek noir detective fairy tale re-write.
It reminded
me a bit of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, “Oh, you’re a smart guy, are ya?”
It was
mostly funny, though there were a couple jokes that fell a bit flat for me.
The seamy
underside of Hollywood is reprised in the The Big Sheep as Storybook Land to
good effect.
Max Hamm
runs a detective agency with Humpty Dumpty called Hamm and Eggs Detective
Agency. Well, you can guess what happens to Humpty, though perhaps not exactly
how or why.
Little Bo Peep
makes an appearance right off, with a sob story about coming to the big city
and falling on hard times.
“It was
after midnight when the cops called me to come down to King Cole’s Supper Club.
My not so hard-boiled partner had an accident.”
It seems Bo
Peep has drawn them into quite a sordid little story, but eventually Max gets
the upper ham, I mean hand.
Events
become even more sordid in The Long Ever After. “Rose Red did the bump and
grind at the Puss-n-Boots.”
This is
definitely not a comic book for little kids, but the parade of familiar
characters in noir setting continues. Snow White is a very prominent character,
an old friend, perhaps even an old flame, Max Hamm. Apparently Snow White
married badly.
The artwork
is monochromatic with gray washes used to good effect. The pictures alternate
between full page and a traditional comic panel layout on the page, making it
easy to follow the progression of events and speakers.
Yeah, it’s
pretty, well, hammy, but fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment