Ten Grand Volume 1
After button man Joe Fitzgerald fell in love with Laura, he tendered his resignation. As readers of John Wagner and Arthur Ranson’s Button Man (2013) know, that’s impossible. But the button man assigned to Joe is a genuine demon, so after it kills Laura, and Joe is dying, an angel makes a proposal: work for the good guys and whenever he is offed, he will get five minutes with Laura before resurrecting for the next job. In this first collection of an ongoing comic book, Joe takes the case of a missing girl who may be the victim of Laura’s killer. Before the book’s end, Joe gets killed a couple of times and, still living, goes to hell. The plot development and dialogue are above average for this kind of supernatural noir exercise. Templesmith and Smith split the art duties, both using a sharp-lined manner, reminiscent of Frank Miller’s Sin City, and a palette of fleshy hues, but where Templesmith deploys color in washes, Smith sets it down in artful geometric blocks. Hot stuff. --Ray Olson