A new killer, a new mystery.
Creative Staff:
Story: Dean Motter
Art: Dean Motter
What They Say:
Visionary creator Dean Motter returns with a new masterpiece of retrofuturism! Radiant City is a metropolis as mysterious as its alleged creator—Mister X. What should’ve improved the city left it cursed. Now, Mister X must watch over the City of Dreams turned City of Nightmares, keeping vigil during a holiday season that’s anything but jolly.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Mister X property has been around for quite some time, dating back to the early 1980’s, and as a browser of racks at comic book stores for many years, I always saw the books from time to time but never investigated for some reason. With the property ending up at Dark Horse Comics back in 2008, there’s been a handful of projects since, but even then I didn’t make an attempt at it until this new series landed with Dean Motter handling both art and writing chores. Radiant City is a place with a lot of history, which is touched upon at the start, but what we get here is largely accessible, if you treat it as small pieces within the larger puzzle or framework of a corrupted and twisted city with an intriguing cast of characters.
The layout for the book works to its advantage, even if it doesn’t really introduce us to the characters or city for new readers, as we get two stories here that are presented separately. The first one has us dealing with Rosetta Stone, the intrepid newspaper girl, who is dealing with trying to find out what’s going on with a series of murders dubbed the Menorah Murders. With a number of rabbi’s having been killed so far, she’s working the police and trying to understand it while also brushing up against Mister X from time to time with a few clues from there. But what we largely get is seeing Stone dealing with her father that’s come to visit for the holidays and watching as she plays nice with everyone while avoiding her own time at synagogue. There’s definitely an interesting dynamic between the two, the more hardline father and the daughter who is just trying to survive in the world, and it touches upon a number of characters before revealing the trick of the murders.
The second story focuses in a little narrower as it deals with Mercedes, who was X’s ex-girlfriend that recently got out of being implicated in something nefarious. She’s struggling to make ends meet and is doing gift wrapping at a retailer, but that draws her into a double murder plot as a husband and wife, who we met in Stone’s story, are orchestrating some gift giving in order to kill their spouse. What makes it dangerous for Mercedes is that they weren’t supposed to wrap outside gifts and she and another girl could be implicated for taking bribes, or worse. While X makes a useful save along the way, the story is one that works to really acquaint us with Mercdes, which outside of her complaints about being too fat, works nicely and shows us the struggling side of the city for the younger set.
In Summary:
Mister X: Razed is certainly an intriguing book, both for the writing with its denser style and particular approach to dialogue, but also for the artwork. Motter has definitely put together something holiday themed within Radiant City here to show the kind of sickness that exists within the place, but it really is focused more on showcasing the characters or Rosetta and Mercedes more than anything else. Both are certainly interesting and I love how the stories weaved out of each other at small points and both have particularly dark endings to them, but done with such a great sense of style and color about it. This is definitely one of those works where it’s wholly a singular creative vision from start to finish and it shows in a great way. It’s not exactly easily accessible, but it does make you curious about past works and want to know more. For me, I can see there’s a lot of depth and detail to it, but it’ll take some time to scratch past the surface and get to it since it’s so new. But it really looks like it’s worth the time and effort.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: February 25th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
