Betrayal and violence sizzle and broil in this graphic novel, right down to its extraordinary lettering, its size fluctuating, its style shifting, and words sitting rough and uneasy in their confining balloons. Award-winning cartoonist Powell imbues his characters with distinctive visual personalities and humanizes them with a subtle softening and rounding of lines even as he evokes the moral dread with shadows that push into figures and landscapes and bleed blackly across the page. An intense, gritty, thrilling crime story and a painful rumination on race, rage, and inescapable ghosts, this could be an early contender for the next awards season.
The plot rocketing this dramatic, socially conscious crime story is fictional, but its fuel is the true tales that Jensen \dug up as a crime reporter ... The standard buddy cop narrative is given fresh weight by Bailey’s delusional mania ... Jensen further tangles the narrative with vividly depicted historical detailing, such as the militia-like black police force that operated in tandem with the white police. The noirish, harshly shadowed art from Powell recalls his work on March, with a brutal dusting of Frank Miller. The Southern gothic atmosphere and sedimentary layers of guilty consciences read like one of the (better) seasons of True Detective. This lurid, violence-spattered crime graphic novel might be made up, but the questions it raises are a real gut punch.
The knotty story shows the traumas of the past shaping the present, some panels literally haunted by specters ... Powell applies a pleasingly realistic look while cartoonish flourishes electrify the page. Jensen weaves a propulsive narrative of intersecting stories and festering wounds that doesn’t quite deliver a knockout punch but is highly engaging ... Good pulp.
