Review: The Black Diamond Detective Agency

The Black Diamond Detective Agency (HC)
Adapted by Eddie Campbell from a Screenplay by C. Gaby Mitchell
Published by FirstSecond Books. $29.95 USD

I've been waiting for this one for just about a year now, since I first heard about it from Mr. Campbell at SDCC and saw some photocopied pages. I remember when I read his previous graphic novel, The Fate of the Artist, I wanted to give it some time so I could sort out my thoughts. It was a book I enjoyed a great deal, had a qualm or two with, but had no less respect for the artist for going in some directions I didn't prefer. Most of that applies to this book, but I read it today and don't have much to sort out in my head.

It's pretty easy to pick on work that has the appearance of being less personal. After all, this is an adaptation of an unproduced film that Campbell didn't write, unlike most of his work. On the other hand, some of his very best art can be found in the Alan Moore-written From Hell. I'd be more likely to venture that this departure from the norm probably pushed Campbell in positive ways, flexing muscles he hadn't used before and all that. On one level, I enjoyed him trying his hand at a period thriller, and I don't think I have any bias against genre work vs. autobio or artcomix or whatever. Everything's a genre, really.

The story is a good one. A forlorn man is at the train station when the train blows up. He saves many lives that day but it's soon discovered that there is a box of explosives with his name on it, so he's arrested for the murders of half the town's population. He escapes and sets about finding out who framed him. It's very Hitchcock, with the always charming (to me, anyway) turn-of-the-century Alienist/Doctorow period setting. And yet, the results are just a little better than average, some lovely images and graceful compositions just canceling out some missed opportunities and dubious storytelling choices. Right at the beginning I was drawn to the way Campbell drew a window frame only partially held by a wall, the area below and to the left of it open space to show the full figure of our hero behind it. It reminded me of a piece of scenery for a play, and though that's not the worst thing in the world, it did have the effect of making me think of Campbell the storyteller rather than the story he was telling, and that's not an auspicious beginning.

There were several other instances where I was again reminded of the man behind the curtain, such as the curious use of floating signifiers to draw the reader's attention to plot elements, such as a poorly rendered (intentional for the story, not a slight on Campbell) Wanted poster, or as a way to convey in a short space that our hero, Harte, paid for the use of a horse to get to the next story location. I'm sure Campbell could write an eloquent defense of his use of these elements, but I found them distracting and too whimsical for this story.

I suspect Campbell resorted to such tactics out of a need to compress this story into the 130 pages allotted to him by the publisher. I don't know this, but the feeling I had while reading this was that he wasn't able to tell the story at his own pace. If I had, I have to think a cartoonist of Campbell's considerable abilities would have been able to develop his characters more--the mysterious, estranged wife of Harte should have come alive a bit more, and definitely his chance at new love with the police sketch artist should have amounted to more than a few lines of dialogue and a silent, meaningful glance. There was a lot of potential there--the love that could have been but wasn't, abandoned by then-contemporary notions of duty and fidelity, so ironic given how the wife betrayed Harte--but it's not developed. There's also great potential for dark comedy in how Harte hides in plain sight as an aide to the detectives in their search for him. We get whiffs of greatness, but it doesn't come. One is prepared to be charitable to Campbell for a game effort in adapting the material into a reasonably engrossing graphic narrative, but on the other hand, screenplays are about the same length, right? Who knows how true to the script he was required to stay, but if he had the latitude, why not more pages on the dramatic elements listed above and less on the tiresome "sign o' the times" recurring gag between two supporting characters?

There are some great little bits here, even up to the end, such as the sequence where Harte says, hopefully, that it'll be good to get back to their old lives, which is followed by a silent panel of the two in their carriage, a world of lost time and hurt in the space between them. Actually, that might have made a better ending than the plummy epilogue where Harte is shuffled offstage and the two nobody detectives get to finish things off. Campbell's always worth a look, and there's no shame here in a fullblooded (did I mention the whole thing is painted?) effort that comes out a bit muffled. Here's hoping it all comes together in the next one.