Product Description: Goldfish is the story of an enigmatic grifter with a heart of gold, who returns to his old haunts to find his old flame, Lauren, practically running the city's underbelly, and his oldest friend and ex-partner in crime, Izzy, now a police detective. But David Goldfish has come back for one reason, and one reason only--for his son. This beautiful volume features a brand new GOLDFISH prose story written especially for this collection. A complete crime fiction novel in a film noir art style. Fans of Raymond Chandler books, Humphry Bogart films, and crime drama will be delighted.
Excellent piece of material. I first got to known Brian Michael Bendis from an art class at a Community College in Cleveland, OH. This man has a imagination out of this world and his creativity in comics speaks VOLUMES. Cleveland doesn't has much, but if you're into Dramatic/Action pack Comic, then you know Cleveland gave birth to Bendis.
Goldfish is a great crime story. It has a SIN CITY feel to it. The art is incredible. Bendis uses sooo many different form of media to tell a story in every frame. Incredible! Image and Marvel has gained a great person to tell and draw out the stroy. I do recommend this book...even if the plot of story doesn't fit your interest...the artwork in this book will.
Great crime comic This is a really great book with really likable characters, and although the plot is already really well tread, Bendis makes it a really fun read.
Why you should stay away writer/artists - Exhibit A I first noticed Bendis from his run on Daredevil. I really loved the noir-feel to plots, how Murdoch finds himself becoming his own arch-nemisis, all that good stuff. What can I say, I love revisionism.
LONG story short it got me interested in the man behind it all. Looked up some of his other stuff, didn't like what he was doing at Marvel, but then I'd been thumbing my nose at Marvel since Chris Claremont left the door wide-open to jokers like Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane. Figured the decision makers at Marvel had got him in time.
Figured let's look at his early stuff, before he became jaded. Read a few reviews, looked up some promo-artwork... yada yada yada, thought this piece and JINX had promise. Film noirish, moody, gritty, all of that went down nice and smooth (I was just discovering the world of Marlowe too... let's just say Raymond Chandler is the only writer in that genre that could write himself out of a papaerbag).
Bad move. Stupid move. Should have known better. Here's the skinny. The books are too big, too many pages and not in the good way. Printed on cheap paper, poor cluttered layout, too many clashing art styles (yeah, I know that was part of the point). Wasting space with black swathes. Worst of all, the weight of the book means you can't rely on the binding. Sloppy work. This guy needs an artist. Someone who can draw. Someone who understands stylized layouting. George Bess perhaps? Alex Maleev?
The plot's a little thin but servicable, the dialogue can meander but we can can live with it.
Skip this set and try TORSO or POWERS if that's more your speed. The prosecution rests.
Still worth a read Goldfish is an easier read than its companion, Jinx, but still fell short of "groundbreaking" to me. I liked the Goldfish character better in this story, being he was a lot more confident, yet weathered. But, the story seemed to drag on without making any real point. The dialogue, as with Jinx, frustrated me for the same reasons: "reality" conversations just don't work on paper. Bendis is definately a great writer, I will not dispute that, but, Goldfish did not continuously capture me throughout the entire tale. Since this is not a spoiler review I will not reveal any plot. But, I'll just say, the end is worth the wait.
A Bendis fan finds herself disappointed I really like Bendis, in general. He is probably my favorite comic book writer. I really like Powers, and Daredevil, and Alias. Since all of those books are superhero books with noir elements, I figured that this book, his root of noir, would be the rosetta stone of Bendis. Instead, it was just kind of lame.
Goldfish himself was only somewhat interesting. He is a crook who is pretty much just a run of the mill crook who never redeems or elevates or changes himself in any way. I sometimes had trouble knowing which one he was because Bendis' art was pretty unprofessional. A lot of stuff happens to him in this book that you feel is going to add up to some firecracker ending, but then the ending, also, is just kind of lame.
Since Bendis both drew and wrote this comic, and it is all black and white noir, it draws an obvious comparison to Frank Miller's Sin City series. While Sin City is not my favorite comic (I generally find it amusing but one dimensional), it was a lot better than this. I am sincerely surprised that this made the Wizard top 100 list, as I would not even count it among the best of Bendis' work. An interesting debut, yes, but not a book I would recommend to anyone else.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
