The Bronx Kill Review

I'll be honest with you and say that it took me a few tries to really dig into Vertigo Crime's The Bronx Kill. In the opening pages, writer Peter Milligan establishes the main character as borderline unbearable; his existence is not one I had any interest to read about. He was self-centered, self-loathing and most of all: a complete prick. In a mere few pages we see him disrespecting his father, moping in self-pity, and being an overall ass to his lovely wife. Needless to say, it wasn't the appealing type of no-good bastard I wanted to read an entire story about.

However, once I pushed through the first act, the bigger picture came into focus. And as I continued right through to the last page of The Bronx Kill, I realized that our character's many flaws were all leading to one big, final exclamation point where it all came together. 

The Bronx Kill is the story of Martin Keane, a writer who feels haunted by his family's strange past and their relationship to the titular location in New York City - a barren piece of land where only bad things happen. After returning from an extended stay in Ireland where he was researching his new novel, Martin's wife Erin goes missing. On a desperate hunt to find her, Martin unwittingly unravels the many dark secrets of the Keane family history. 

The book is laced intermittently with excerpts of Martin's novel-in-progress, which not only cleverly parallel the primary narrative of The Bronx Kill, but also pop up in remarkably well placed beats of the story. Milligan toys with the reader by placing a relatively long winded excerpt of a novel right after a page turning cliffhanger; the mark of a veteran comic book storyteller. Most of these pages of prose are accompanied by Martin's scribblings of notes in the margins, adding a simple and effective layer to the inner workings of his character, and further tying in the two narratives. 

At one point, Martin leaves a note in the margins of an especially over-the-top dramatic paragraph, saying "Not a f*cking melodrama!" I found this exceedingly interesting as the story went on, as I realized that that's exactly what The Bronx Kill is: an operatic melodrama, in the best of terms. Between the family drama, good cop/bad cop, the relationship quandaries, and the insatiable quest for justice, Milligan constructs what essentially becomes a black hole of the over dramatic. Though in any other case this would likely be a fault of any story, the pulpy nature of Vertigo Crime in general recalls the rather melodramatic crime novels of yesteryear. So, instead of coming off hackneyed, what results in The Bronx Kill is genre-referential crime comic with literary legitimacy. The melodrama makes the character, and ultimately changes him. The character arc is pretty epic for the span of such a short book, and it made me appreciate the unbearable qualities of Martin that I initially thought would prevent me from ever enjoying this book. 

James Romberger's art I was less eager to warm up to. The man can draw, without a doubt, but his work here is very uneven when it comes to details. One panel could be a great shot of a street in Manhattan's East Village, with sneakers strung over power lines and tree lined neighborhoods, and a few pages later the background is solid white, losing that intense level of detail. He also excels in closeups on faces, but things often become muddied when the shot gets a bit wider. 

Though it doesn't always work to the book's benefit, Romberger uses a wealth of different textures and styles within The Bronx Kill, from different pencil grades to shading with mostly inks to shading only with graphite. Other panels even seem to have some aspect of a painted quality to them. It's a strange meshing of styles that works when it fits in with the deepening madness of Martin as he struggles to solve the mystery of his missing wife and her relation to The Bronx Kill. 

It's been a strange trip for Vertigo Crime since launching, traversing different genres that sometimes felt a bit out place. With The Bronx Kill, the line returns to the genre that I think will ultimately prove to hold the most successes for it: reality-based crime fiction. It's definitely the best entry since Filthy Rich, and hopefully a glimpse of big things to come.