Filthy? Yeah. Rich? Not So Much.

So for my local graphic novel group, which meets every month, we tried a new experiment this month. Rather than all 20+ of us reading one GN and discussing, we split into four groups, allowing us to have a more manageable discussion. Each group got a different book to discuss, all related to the general them of "Crime". The assigned books were Torso, Road to Perdition, the first volume of Criminal, and Filthy Rich, the inaugural book from the new "Vertigo Crime" imprint. I ended up with Filthy Rich.

Coming into the discussion, I was prepared to be the lone contrarian who really disliked the book. But it turned out that most of the group agreed with me, with even the strongest defender of Azzarello and Santos' noir offering giving the book only a "C" grade. This really surprised me, because even though I didn't care for the book, I seemed to recall that it got pretty good reviews upon release. Also, although I haven't read much of Azzarello's work, including 100 Bullets, his signature series, I know he is a generally well-regarded writer, and that Filthy Rich fits right into the hard-boiled crime category for which he is known.

Actually, I think Azzarello's reputation might have hurt my reading of the book, because I expected a lot more from him than what I got. I had multiple problems with this book, which focuses on a down-and-out former football player, Rich Junkin, who lost his chance to make the big time after blowing out his leg just as he was about to turn pro. He's now working as a (really bad) used-car salesman, and gets involved in a shady world of high society and criminality after agreeing to act as a bodyguard of sorts for his boss's daughter.

If this sounds like a by-the-numbers, formulaic crime story, that's because it is, and nowhere does it really deviate from that formula. There were other issues as well, including some relatively weak art by Victor Santos. I don't think I had seen any of Santos other work before this, but here his work came off as the poor man's Eduardo Risso, or possibly the homeless man's Frank Miller. His rendering of the characters made it hard to tell who was who at times, and at other times his story-telling choices required a second look at the page to figure out what was going on.

I guess my main problem, though, was the lack of a strong lead -- or at least the lack of any strong, discernible motivation for the lead. Rich just kind of fumbles through the paces of the story, and we never really see any kind of plan or goal for him, beyond perhaps having sex with every woman in the story with a pulse -- all of whom seem to be inexplicably drawn to this washed-out loser. If Rich was a stronger character, or perhaps if the boss's daughter, who was probably the most interesting character in the story, had been cast as the lead instead, the familiar tropes of sex, drugs, murder, and double-crosses might have had more resonance and actually served the story, rather than simply leaving Filthy Rich to read like a connect-the-dots crime book.

All of which leads me to a broader point. I think I may have some idea why Filthy Rich got better reviews than, in my opinion, it deserved. A lot of people, especially people who write reviews on blogs or on comics websites, are very excited to see comics branch out of the superhero ghetto and include more diverse genres and subjects. Heck, I generally agree with them. But just because I love the idea of a Vertigo sub-imprint devoted to the crime genre, that doesn't mean I'm going to be any more forgiving to a sub-standard, by-the-numbers crime story than I would to a by-the-numbers, sub-standard superhero story. The problem comes in, in my view, when non-superhero books are given more latitude because they are trying to do something different (even if that something different would be considered formulaic or trite in another medium, such as film or prose novels).

So yeah, I would love to see more crime stories, but make 'em good crime stories, please. I'll discuss one of those good stories published by the Vertigo Crime imprint, Area 10, in this space soon.