Review: Damned by Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt

by Chriss Cornish published: February 1, 2008 No Comments

This Book Is About

Sometimes the only person you can trust is a dead man. Prohibition era gangsters grew rich on vice. But unknown to the masses, a more sinister power controlled the crime cartels, using greed, gluttony, lust and other sins to fuel a much more lucrative trade: mortal souls. The long-standing feud between two of the families is about to end thanks to a deal to consolidate power. But before things can be finalized, the bookkeeper tasked to broker the deal is kidnapped. Hoping to find the missing bookkeeper before the deal falls apart, Big Al pulls Eddie’s corpse out of a ditch and puts him on the case.

Our gumshoe Eddie now finds himself caught up in the middle of a sinister web of kidnapping, murder, and damnation. Things would go so much smoother if he could just stop getting himself killed. It’s a curse, but there are worse curses to have in this dark and crazy world.

My Thoughts On This Book

1930′s-set supernatural noir horror, gotta love that combo. This is one of my top two favorites of the many good titles I discovered at the 2007 ComiCon. I look for more Damned every time I visit a comic shop.

Where to start? The main character, Eddie, is a scarred-up, scrawny guy in the tradition of the noir detective. He’s been cursed so that, when he dies, anyone who touches his body suddenly dies of whatever killed him and he comes back to life, good as new and with a few more scars; anyone touching his corpse essentially trades their life for his. In fact, volume one begins with Eddie lying dead down a back alley with his throat cut. Over the course of the following days he gets killed at last three more times. And he’s starting to become aware that he goes somewhere each time he dies.

The writing is good and the plotting is well paced, with lots of noir-style confrontations. And the reader has a few little side mysterious to intrigue them in addition to the central one of, “what happened to the dude supposed to finalize the brokered peace between the demon mob families?”. The characters are developed well, too.

I like the art for Damned. It is well executed and planned out with an eye to cinematic-like effect. Evidence of this is that the art and frame style actual changes slightly when Eddie’s in the place his soul goes while he’s dead. The lettering is good, too, since you just read the text items without ever thinking about it, which is as it should be in a comic.

Shade-tastic Or Blank-Space-City?: How Well This B&W Comic Was Shaded

Damned is very well shaded indeed, thank you. I had no trouble at all, at any point, following the action or distinguishing between subjects in the frame.

As you know if you’ve read my reviews of black-and-white comics before, shading is very key to my being able to enjoy, let alone read, them. Because they’re usually either not shaded at all or have token shading, I have no idea where to look and can’t follow the action in most B&W comics. This one little detail keeps them from even being in the same galaxy as well shaded works like Damned, which has become one of my favorite graphic novels.