FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK (REVIEWED), DIGITAL | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Comedy, crime and comic books make for an interesting blend. The graphic novel format does both action drama and slapstick humour very well, so of course, leave it to Joe Hill to write a book that brings it all together. Dying Is Easy is the story of Syd “Shit Talk” Homes, an ex-cop who now makes a living telling jokes on stage. His act is pretty dark, based off his own life experiences. Syd has issues and like all hard-boiled detective clichés, an aeroplane’s worth of baggage.
Predictably, Syd gets framed for a crime he didn’t commit and has to use his wit and skill to avoid arrest whilst trying to figure out who did the deed. It’s a well-trodden path and if you’ve read any crime drama you can tell where this is going pretty early on. This isn’t exactly a classic of the crime drama canon.
Dying Is Easy is a great idea for a book, but its main issue is that the mix isn’t quite right. Martin Simmonds artwork is sumptuous, dark and evocative of a noir-style crime thriller. It would be absolutely perfect in a Batman book or something much darker. The issue here is that this is more an action comedy-drama. The story feels more like an episode of Castle or Bones than a hard-boiled detective drama. The result is that the art distracts from the dialogue and there’s simply too much going on.
As for the dialogue, Hill aims for a mix between hard-boiled and humorous and lands far off the mark every time. There’s a line between gritty and cliché, between funny and cruel and unfortunately, this book doesn’t seem to know where it is. Though you can see what it’s trying to do, the gags don’t land well and the action is stale and straight forward. The phrase ‘Dying is easy, comedy is hard’ has never been so apt; there’s very little life here and the humour is sorely lacking.
Still, the art is very good and the characters are interesting, just poorly implemented. All the elements of something great are here and if this gets a sequel (or adapted into a TV show), then we would certainly give this another go.
