Strange Detective Tales

    (Oddgod, 2005)
™ and ©2005 Jesse Bausch & James Calahan

Is the Golden Age of Hollywood dead? Maybe, but Jesse Bausch and James Callahan seem to think it’s risen again to feed on the flesh of the living. In Strange Detective Tales: Dead Love, the writer-artist (respectively) team dips into the shining, golden sunset of Hollywood noir, and then digs that bastid out of its freshly laid grave for a danse macabre.

What’s great is that despite the mess of truly hard-to-look at freaks (including one crispy, bubbly-fleshed burlesque girl that gives the shudders) and B-movie misfits, this is very human book. It nails that Chandler feeling about a world of broken people whose best days are behind them. Then, for fun, the stick it nails the feeling to happens to be a couple of (literally) wormy monster movie henchmen.

Callahan’s art might remind you of Geoff Darrow with the sparse linework that nevertheless yields rich textures, but it’s too idiosyncratic even for that. These two talents are only getting started. The backup story is equally touching, and the book includes some great pinups, too.

— Brendan McGinley
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#1

July, 2005
Cover Price: $3.95
2 copies available from $2.98 		Jesse Bausch, Joel PriddyJames Calahan, Shane McDermott