Simping Detective by Simon Spurrier & Frazer Irving

by Chriss Cornish published: March 1, 2010 No Comments

This Book Is About

Mega-City One, 2129 AD. Simped-up private eye Jack Point is an undercover ‘Wally Squad’ Judge – ‘cos only a clown would want to walk the streets of Angeltown, the scuzziest part of City Bottom. He’s got two friends in this world, one’s long and hard, and makes your ears ring after every shot; the other’s his gun. In fact, Jack’s got enemies on both sides of the Law, and he’s never far from trouble.

My Thoughts On This Book

The Simping Detective is simply awesome. This is noir science fiction at its absolute best. The writing is first rate and the artwork is amazing and masterfully inked. The lettering is also well done, being incorporated into the story instead of inserted (Tom Frame & Ellie de Ville).

I love cross-genre noir and this graphic novel is one of the prime examples of why. Just writing about it makes me want to re-read it.

The story is set in a gritty and grimy far future setting. There are little chinks of light createad by noir witt and a bit of surreal humor. A running gag through the stories is Jack Point’s catch-joke; “What’s your point?” “It comes after the Jack” (it took me far too long to get that, too). Later, Jack gets a alien sidekick/pet that he names Clique (Point and Clique, he he).

If you ever played the RPG HoL you’ll love Simping Detective.

What really impressed me the most about Simping Detective is how it uses color. The illustrations are all black and white but most of the stories have little accents of color judiciously applied to highlight or further dramatize something.

For example, the story “Crystal Blue”, which is my favorite and sees a corrupt Judge sending Jack Point after drug pedaling nuns and features the use of an electric guitar to fend off alien super-predators. The only color in “Crystal Blue” is turquoise and it’s used in both the artwork and the lettering to indicate the drugs or someone under their influence.

Having never read any Frank Miller graphic novels, this was the first time I’d ever seen this technique in a comic and it just blew me away.

As a warning, Simping Detective is intended for adults and has coarseness and situations most would consider inappropriate for a non-adult audience.

What the Simp?

So, what the heck is a ‘simp’ or the ‘wally squad’ or ‘judges’? Simping Detective is set in the dark far future universe of AD 2000 that’s home to Judge Dredd (who makes an appearance in two of the Jack Point comics in this book).

Judges are, essentially, the police. Jack Point is an undercover Judge. He belongs to a department called the Wally Squad that consists of undercover Judges who pose as simps to get the drop on crime. Jack’s cover in the Wally Squad is a simping private detective.

‘Simp’ appears to be short for ‘simpleton’ and in the AD 2000 setting they’re people who’ve gone almost benevolently crazy and wander around dressed in clown costumes or bunny suits.

Serialization

There are seven Jack Point stories in this graphic novel; six comics and an illustrated short story. All originally appeared in a British comics periodical called Judge Dredd Magazine. They appeared in issues 220-227, 234-239, and 253-257.

The Jack Point stories in this volume are:

Mega-city Noir: Gumshoe (appeared in issue/meg 220)
Crystal Blue (appeared in issues/megs 221-223)
Innocence: A Broad (appeared in issues/megs 224-236)
Playing Futsie (appeared in issue/meg 234-236)
Fifteen (appeared in issue/meg 237)
Petty Crimes (appeared in issues/megs 238-239)
No Body, No How (appeared in issues/megs 253-257)
Dorks of War (illustrated short story. I couldn’t find what issues it appeared in. It may have been written for the book.)

Shadetastic or Blank-city: How Well Was This Black&White Comic Colored

A major hurdle for B&W comics to overcome is readability; if the inks and art aren’t done right the viewer can be left with visual mush they can’t follow easily. I, with my abstract brain, especially have this problem. But there are no problems following action or distinguishing important objects with this book.