Nothing is safe. Nothing is sacred. Not in Peepland.
Creative Staff:
Story: Christa Faust & Gary Phillips
Art: Andrea Camerini
Colors: Macro Lesko
Additional Inks: Jed Dougherty
Letters: Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt
What They Say:
With the cops closing in on Roxy’s whereabouts and the New Years ball about to drop, it’s looking to be a climatic December 31st in Times Square! Get ready for the thrilling conclusion to this gritty 80s crime yarn!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
There’s a quote that I’ve always loved. It comes from Peter Straub’s Mystery and it kept coming back to me while I read this final issue of Peepland:
“You’re a scholar, and this here’s your school. Your lessons are hard—hard—but you gotta learn ‘em. Most people don’t learn what you bein’ taught until they a lot older. Nothin’ is safe, that’s what you been learnin’. Nothing is whole, not for too damn long. The world is half night.”
Certainly nothing is safe or whole in Peepland on New Year’s Eve. Roxy and Nick run from their lives. Aiesha and AJ run out of money and hope with no way of saving Aiesha’s son Zee from taking the fall for the murder of a white woman in Central Park. Assassins and crooked cops run the streets while the drunks celebrate, and there’s a good chance that no one will live to see the new year.
Typically at this point I run through a summary of the issue’s high points. I’m not going to do that this time, because there’s no way I can do that without spoiling anything, and I want y’all to read this final issue. Suffice to say, this story fulfills the first rule of any good story: anybody can die at any moment.
This is a nasty story where no one is safe, where violence is the lingua franca, and innocence is a commodity no one can afford. Make no mistake, cats and kittens, many people die in this finale, and their deaths are sudden, awful, and pointless.
Ironically, the point is that these deaths are pointless. Violence is sometimes justified, but in this case, the violence stems from fear and rage: fear on the part of Simon Went of losing face and power because of his boy’s actions; rage and fear by the white citizens of New York over the perceived killing of a white woman by a young black man; rage over the sins of the past. These primal emotions lead to terrible actions that cause great suffering, and the bitch of it is, there’s no clear lesson for the protagonists to learn.
In true crime fiction style, Peepland ends with just about as many questions as it started with. The world is a dirty place full of people in power just aching to exercise it and take yours away. The law of the jungle rules, and it’s kill or be killed, use or be used, and if there’s anything beyond this mundane, profane veil, it’s damn well hidden. The world keeps spinning, and it’s always half night.
It’s hardly a comforting point of view, but crime fiction doesn’t offer comfort. It offers broken, desperate people performing broken, desperate acts in a cold, indifferent universe, and Peepland offers that in spades. The writing has been impeccable since issue one, as has the art and color. I’ve never been to New York, so I don’t know what it’s like outside of popular fiction. I definitely don’t know firsthand what it was like in the 1980s, so it seems disingenuous for me to say that this comic captures the look and feel of the city in that decade (even though I have made that claim in previous reviews), but it feels right. I can’t say that it captures the facts (although I believe it does), but the level of verisimilitude—the semblance of reality—is fantastic, and of all the Aristotelean elements, setting stands as the strongest in this piece. Certainly the characters and plot are both excellent, but none of it would have come together if this creative team hadn’t captured this setting with such fidelity and verisimilitude.
If Peepland is indicative of the overall quality of Hard Case Crime’s new comic line then I say that hardboiled fiction fans are in for an embarrassment of riches with future stories. Hopefully Christa Faust, Gary Phillips, Andrea Camerini, and Marco Lesko will team up again for another series and teach us (again) that the world is half night.
In Summary:
Peepland #5 brings this excellent series to a bloody and satisfying ending. As much as I’m going to miss this comic, I’m glad that it ended as strongly as it began. Here’s hoping we see more titles like this from Titan’s Hard Case Crime imprint. Dr. Josh gives this an….
Grade: A
Age Rating: N/A
Released By: Titan Comics
Release Date: 29 March 2017
MSRP: $3.99
