Murder Mysteries review
P. Craig Russell is one of the few comic artists I will buy anything he does. So when I saw the graphic novel Murder Mysteries where he adapts a short story by Neil Gaiman, I was all psyched. But, uh, I found it very underwhelming and annoying.
Story summary, since I can't really talk about it w/out it:
The present-day story involves a London man remembering a decade-old stopover in LA. He hooks up with an old flame, but can't remember much of the night--though we get parts of it: her room mate picking him up, her giving him a blowjob, them looking in on her young daughter.
Much later that night, he meets an old man who tells him the story of the First Murder of one angel by another in the Shining City when the Universe was still being created. The old man tells the story as if he were the "cop/ vengeance of the Lord" angel who solves the murder. Cop-angel then gives the London man a kiss, implying it's a gift of forgetfulness. Later on, the London man reads on the LA-London plane about a triple murder (a woman, her room mate, a child), and has a memory of fucking his old flame with cold blood everywhere.
So the angel murder story is given a lot of time, and obviously is supposed to parallel our London-dude story. Two angels are working on creating the concept of "Love," become lovers, but when they take on a new project "Death," one loses interest in being lovers and the other kills him in jealousy. After the murderer-angel is executed, Lucifer is all "But... he *loved.* He should have been forgiven. There were... mitigating circumstances. He should not have been destroyed like that. That was *wrong.*" And ultra-heavily implied that this whole Love project + capital punishment was all God's plan, so that Lucifer would think God was unfair, and be on his way to The Fall. And cop-angel regrets executing the angel as well, so it seemed that taking London-dude's memory away is his way of meting out a less "unfair" punishment? It's implied that by taking away some important hours of memories, and with the passage of time, the man London-dude was 10 years ago is "dead."
JKJGFDLFSDHS WHAT. NO I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS.
Ok 1st I am not down with Lucifer's actual problem with the angel-murder sentence. It wasn't that every life is precious, or that the murderer-angel didn't really comprehend "Love" or "Death" and so was making pretty uniformed decisions every step of the way, or that killers should never be killed. Nope, the argument was: "oh but if you kill someone in a jealous rage because of *lovvve* it's a 'mitigating circumstance.'" WAT NO. NO.
2nd, because the of whole killer-angel not really comprehending emotions that were just created, the parallel between killer-angel and London-dude's situation is really wonky. Especially since the murder of the LA flame is shrouded in mystery, and basically the flashbacks really make it seem like he did a triple homicide to fuck her corpse, since she wouldn't fuck him being on her period. I just. What. Maybe there is another interpretation to the LA events, but I'm not getting it. And she was the one who said she loved him, not the other way round so... I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to get anything other than London-dude being pretty stone-cold horrible. And also not really seeing how "Love" plays in here? Maybe... reincarnation angle somehow that I am not getting?
And then the cop-angel gifts London-dude w forgetfulness. I just rrrrg. I swear this is a repeating theme. Supernatural being/Angel/God/Some man "forgives" another man for some horrible wrong done to women/children because of how important forgiveness is. I just. I hate it. It's my least fav twist on fridging ever. And I have complicated thoughts about punishment and vengeance, but it was not shown as a personality-wipe, but blacking out a few hours. That is not like death. Also not a good alternate punishment imho.
Unless the point is that this angel-cop keeps giving shitty punishments? Or that forgetfulness allowed this dude to have a happy life 10 years later with a wife and kids and that's better in the grand scheme of things than punishing him? Since I only have clues as to what happened that night, I'm wondering how long until he buries a new body in the church graveyard by his house, though. I get the concept of ultimate forgiveness, but I don't know if I ever buy it pre-death. Especially since it's almost always presented in these types of forgiveness stories as being given by someone who wasn't the perpetrator's real victim to someone who has done little to atone.
I tried looking up reviews to see what people thought, but they were either impressed by Gaiman's view of angels/God, and that Lucifer wasn't totally evil (not a surprise to me knowing Gaiman's other work), having some gay freakout, or thinking that the short story was better. I'm not sure how the last can be true, because my problems with this are all about story-theme. P. Craig Russell's gorgeous art and hot angels were the best part. I suppose the "whodunnit" part is much stronger in a story, but that might have made it worse for me. Because I kept hoping my interpretation and guesses would be wrong, since they had such oogy story-theme-implications. But, yeah.
Mechanics-wise, it's probably a good story (like the technical aspects of construction/symbolism/pacing etc), and it's always fun to see Gaiman write God as kinda a douche and the angels, including Lucifer, dealing with that, but... bleh.
P. Craig Russell's art is amazeballs though.
Story summary, since I can't really talk about it w/out it:
The present-day story involves a London man remembering a decade-old stopover in LA. He hooks up with an old flame, but can't remember much of the night--though we get parts of it: her room mate picking him up, her giving him a blowjob, them looking in on her young daughter.
Much later that night, he meets an old man who tells him the story of the First Murder of one angel by another in the Shining City when the Universe was still being created. The old man tells the story as if he were the "cop/ vengeance of the Lord" angel who solves the murder. Cop-angel then gives the London man a kiss, implying it's a gift of forgetfulness. Later on, the London man reads on the LA-London plane about a triple murder (a woman, her room mate, a child), and has a memory of fucking his old flame with cold blood everywhere.
So the angel murder story is given a lot of time, and obviously is supposed to parallel our London-dude story. Two angels are working on creating the concept of "Love," become lovers, but when they take on a new project "Death," one loses interest in being lovers and the other kills him in jealousy. After the murderer-angel is executed, Lucifer is all "But... he *loved.* He should have been forgiven. There were... mitigating circumstances. He should not have been destroyed like that. That was *wrong.*" And ultra-heavily implied that this whole Love project + capital punishment was all God's plan, so that Lucifer would think God was unfair, and be on his way to The Fall. And cop-angel regrets executing the angel as well, so it seemed that taking London-dude's memory away is his way of meting out a less "unfair" punishment? It's implied that by taking away some important hours of memories, and with the passage of time, the man London-dude was 10 years ago is "dead."
JKJGFDLFSDHS WHAT. NO I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS.
Ok 1st I am not down with Lucifer's actual problem with the angel-murder sentence. It wasn't that every life is precious, or that the murderer-angel didn't really comprehend "Love" or "Death" and so was making pretty uniformed decisions every step of the way, or that killers should never be killed. Nope, the argument was: "oh but if you kill someone in a jealous rage because of *lovvve* it's a 'mitigating circumstance.'" WAT NO. NO.
2nd, because the of whole killer-angel not really comprehending emotions that were just created, the parallel between killer-angel and London-dude's situation is really wonky. Especially since the murder of the LA flame is shrouded in mystery, and basically the flashbacks really make it seem like he did a triple homicide to fuck her corpse, since she wouldn't fuck him being on her period. I just. What. Maybe there is another interpretation to the LA events, but I'm not getting it. And she was the one who said she loved him, not the other way round so... I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to get anything other than London-dude being pretty stone-cold horrible. And also not really seeing how "Love" plays in here? Maybe... reincarnation angle somehow that I am not getting?
And then the cop-angel gifts London-dude w forgetfulness. I just rrrrg. I swear this is a repeating theme. Supernatural being/Angel/God/Some man "forgives" another man for some horrible wrong done to women/children because of how important forgiveness is. I just. I hate it. It's my least fav twist on fridging ever. And I have complicated thoughts about punishment and vengeance, but it was not shown as a personality-wipe, but blacking out a few hours. That is not like death. Also not a good alternate punishment imho.
Unless the point is that this angel-cop keeps giving shitty punishments? Or that forgetfulness allowed this dude to have a happy life 10 years later with a wife and kids and that's better in the grand scheme of things than punishing him? Since I only have clues as to what happened that night, I'm wondering how long until he buries a new body in the church graveyard by his house, though. I get the concept of ultimate forgiveness, but I don't know if I ever buy it pre-death. Especially since it's almost always presented in these types of forgiveness stories as being given by someone who wasn't the perpetrator's real victim to someone who has done little to atone.
I tried looking up reviews to see what people thought, but they were either impressed by Gaiman's view of angels/God, and that Lucifer wasn't totally evil (not a surprise to me knowing Gaiman's other work), having some gay freakout, or thinking that the short story was better. I'm not sure how the last can be true, because my problems with this are all about story-theme. P. Craig Russell's gorgeous art and hot angels were the best part. I suppose the "whodunnit" part is much stronger in a story, but that might have made it worse for me. Because I kept hoping my interpretation and guesses would be wrong, since they had such oogy story-theme-implications. But, yeah.
Mechanics-wise, it's probably a good story (like the technical aspects of construction/symbolism/pacing etc), and it's always fun to see Gaiman write God as kinda a douche and the angels, including Lucifer, dealing with that, but... bleh.
P. Craig Russell's art is amazeballs though.