By: AJ Lieberman (writer), Nick Thornborrow (art), Brandon DeStefano (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)
The Story: A criminal on the run from the Russian mob and dirty cops is forced to take his estranged daughter with him on the lam.
What’s Good: This is a very solid 144 page softcover OGN from Image. If you enjoy crime stories, this is something you might want to check out.
The trick with any crime story is to give us a main character we can root for. That isn’t always an easy thing when the main character is a criminal, but Lieberman has a pretty good concept to make Nick Barrow seem not quite so bad: Nick just plans the crimes and then sells the plans to other dudes to do the actual robbing, shooting and killing. So, Nick’s hands are relatively clean and we can want good things for him.
As with many crime stories, the action revolves around a heist-gone-bad. When the dust settles, the big Russian gangster’s son is dead and he thinks that Nick is responsible, and here is where the story deviates from the norm (which would be to show Nick somehow take down the mob) by showing Nick resigned to the fact that they’re going to kill him eventually, so he buys a huge life insurance policy with his estranged 13 year old daughter as the beneficiary. The only trick is that it’ll take 21 days for the paperwork to be processed, so he has to stay one step ahead of the bad guys for 21 days and his daughter will be provided for.
But, the real highlight is the father – daughter story between Nick and a daughter that he barely knows. This isn’t even really part of the “crime story” as the set-up is typical: divorced parents, teenage girl, mother hates father, father has barely seen daughter. But the execution is quite good as the kid realizes that her dad isn’t quite the villain that mom made him out to be. Even if you are a good parent, there is a lot to identify with in terms of staying close to your kids and not wanting a gulf like this to ever develop.
In terms of narrative structure, the action is mostly linear, but there are places where it bounces around in time a little bit, especially in the early phases of the story. The end is much more linear. And the scenes are very quick and choppy with most being only a page or two. This gives the story a faster feel than it would ordinarily have.
Thornborrow’s art is quite good. He uses a loser style than we sometimes see in a crime book and I think it allows his characters to appear more lifelike as he does a great job with facial expression and body language where less-is-more. His layouts are pretty dense as each page has ~5-7 panels and they always tell the story very effectively and you can always tell the characters apart.
What’s Not So Good: The only troubling things were a little bit of confusion about the story in the early phases when there is a LOT of jumping between scenes. That could be due to the fact that there is a LOT of story set-up to absorb or it could be that I wasn’t fully used to the storytelling structure, but I felt like I missed some things in the early portion of the book.
There is also a dirty cop angle in this story that never felt quite essential. It becomes important towards the climax, but it was always the less interesting and more confusing part of book.
Conclusion: Lieberman & Thornborrow has crafted an entertaining and well-written crime OGN that is well worth your time if you enjoy the heist-gone-bad genre especially when the central story is a father-daughter relationship that transcends genres.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
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