Product Description: Bendis Strikes Again! Cleveland. 1935. Eliot Ness, fresh from his legendary Chicago triumph oer Al Capone and associcates, se his sights on Cleveland. He went on a creusade that matched, and sometimes even surpassed, his past accomplishments. But dismembered body parts started washing up in a concentrated area of Lake Erie Sound. Headless torsos that left no clues to their identity or reason for death. Eliot Ness and his colorful gang of THE UNKNOWNS chased this killer through the underbelly of Cleveland for years. As far as the public ws concerned, he was never captured. But what really happened is even more shocking. This award winning series is finally collected into this handsome edition. Also included is material never seen before and a photo essay of the actual murders.
Good story, woeful art Elliot Ness (of Untouchables fame) investigates a series of VERY grisly murders. Bendis is a fine writer but the art is confusing and just no, just no.
Hilarious! That 'official' review up top sounds like it came straight from the horse's mouth, courtesy of "fortune and glory". So awesome, yet strangely hard to read with my eyes closed. tag this review as 'unhelpful'.
Bad Binding for Bendis Beware of used books sold directly by Amazon. This book by Bendis fell apart as soon as I read the first 10 pages. It was badly bound. A total rip-off. For a few dollars more I could have bought it new. Very aggravating.
So-so story with painfully bad art I almost gave up on this a couple of different times thanks to artwork and page layouts that were completely amateurish. Most of the characters don't even look the same from panel to panel so that you lose track of which person is which. The only times they are recognizable is when they are exact copies of a prior illustration and in which the character is posing in a way that doesn't fit what is supposed to be happening to them -- frequently on the same page. If you've seen the comic strip Red Meat or some others where the same picture is in each panel with only new words coming out of their mouths, it's pretty similar to this. Plus there are several times when you are suddenly expected to turn the orientation of the book to continue reading the rest of the page. I'm sure this was done with the belief that it would help keep the reader's interest and make it seem more dramatic, but it had the opposite effect.
As far as the story goes, it's pretty basic. It tries to follow the facts of the case for a while, but in a rather lackluster and tedious way. The only time any suspense is established it's for a part that was completely made up in an absurdly cliched way with the heroes confronting the supposed villain. In the real world, the true perpetrator was never caught and no evidence other than wild speculation about who it might have been. Here they make it clear who the killer supposedly was and catch him red handed. This book's publicity claims it was "what really happened," but nothing at all like this ever took place. I'd chalk the claim up to just overzealous marketing, but unfortunately it's clear that many readers don't know this part was fabricated and the notes at the end do not clearly spell it out, insisting that they got the real killer. This comic book even somehow managed to win an award for journalism in the city it was based in, believe it or not. Perhaps they're just really hurting for solid news writing there.
My first Bendis, Won't be my Last! I've heard good things about Brian Michael Bendis and finally got around to reading one of his works. Torso is a graphic novel that tells the true-crime story of a 1930s serial killer at work in Cleveland, Ohio, who leaves mutilated bodies around town with feet, hands and heads removed. At the same time, the city has hired famous lawman Eliot Ness to come from Chicago to clean up their corrupt city, starting with the police force.
The story moves between Ness and his work in dealing with the press, politicos, and cleaning up the city, to the two detectives who are primarily working the Torso case. There are personal and interpersonal developments with all the main characters, but the thrust of the story is a police procedural, so these are left in the background for the most part, which is appropriate given the choice Bendis is making in telling his story. As a second level they give a nice amount of texture to the main story and get you to care more about the main characters.
Bendis makes it clear at the end of the book that much of what he has presented is based in fact and provides some of the sources for art and photos that appeared throughout the story. This was neat to see some of where the story came from but left me a bit frustrated as to what was made up, particularly in terms of the climax of the story. But I was okay with that. As in real police work, all questions aren't always answered when the case is wrapped, and sometimes the best you can do to close a case is to identify the perpetrator, even if you can't charge him or her.
For the most part I also loved the art style. I loved the cinematic aspects of it, and the heavy black and white style fit perfectly with a story set in the 1930s. I also loved the way real photographs were blended with drawn art, often as backgrounds showing real Cleveland settings, underscoring the theme that this is the author's embroidering (by imagining conversations) on real people and a real time. Occasionally it was hard to tell characters apart, especially Ness and the detectives, and I sometimes had to retrace a series of dialogue balloons to figure out who was saying what, but I was okay with that.
On the whole, it was a great read, and a quick one, as I read it in one sitting, but I'll definitely revisit it and look for more of Bendis' work. One minor complaint--my book was bought new but the last page is already coming unglued from the binding, so this book will have to be treated with care as the binding appears somewhat fragile.
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