Chin Music #1 - Mobile Edition

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Chin Music #1
By Geoff Hoppe
May 10, 2013 - 14:19

Image Comics
Writer(s): Steve Niles
Penciller(s): Tony Harris
Letterer(s): Bill Tortolini
Cover Artist(s): Tony Harris
$2.99

This may not be the first time someone’s combined private eyes, Al Capone’s Chicago and Egyptian mysticism. That wouldn’t make me any less impressed by Steve Niles and Tony Harris’ Chin Music #1.

The Obligatory Warning: gore, profanity, some Evil Dead-style flesh peeling.

Chin Music #1 is a striking debut issue. The plot isn’t yet clear, but the pacing is terrific, the atmosphere’s tense, and the art is stunning. The story opens with a noir-ish private eye inscribing his bullets with an ancient language and dripping black candle wax on them. If that doesn’t hook you, I probably don’t care for you as a human being. The story then globe-traipses to Egypt, then to Eliot Ness, and then to a windy city dinner party that ends unpleasantly for Al Capone. Whatever it’s going to be, Chin Music will definitely include several different genres in what’s so far an incredibly promising way. The connection between events and genres isn’t entirely certain in #1, but that doesn’t make the story less gripping.

Credit’s due to Niles’ hard-boiled rhythm for keeping the uncertain proceedings interesting. For a lesser author, this dialogue-light story might have been incoherent, but Niles, like that hard-boiled master Raymond Chandler, knows how to balance action and quietude. If events seem to unfold without explanation, that’s less the mark of uncertain storytelling than a reflection of the way this story’s action bursts from otherwise quiet scenes. The juxtaposition of private dick introspection with occult-powered chase scenes is startling in its effect and smooth in its execution: Niles lets the sequence of the sequential art tell the story. It doesn’t hurt that the jaggedness with which he jumps back and forth between action and quiet makes the genre pastichery aware of itself without being precious or self-impressed. Genre-splicing (think Warren Ellis’ Planetary, Mike Mignola’s marriages of Eliphas Levi with steampunk technology, or anything Quentin Tarantino’s done, ever) is as common in comics as capes and tights, but Niles enlivens this common strategy by making the weirdness of its juxtapositions part of the narrative.

Tony Harris is as much responsible for that strategy as Niles’ writing. The layout signals the shifts between story types, with panel borders alternating between art deco filigree and 1930s mummy-movie symbols. This detail is dismissed in action scenes, where the panel shapes revert to simple block forms. The strategy of juxtaposition common to story and art immerses the reader in the story. Even if you hate horror, gangsters or Howard Carter-era Egyptiana, Chin Music’s slick approach to comics storytelling makes it worth reading.

This is an exciting, meticulously executed story. Unless Niles insults my family in future issues, I’m buying them all.

Worth the money? Absolutely.