Product Description: The smash European series Chicanos arrives on these shores with this first volume of an ongoing series recounting the misadventures of A.Y. Jalisco, Private Detective. Penned by Carlos Trillo and featuring art by fan favorite Eduardo Risso (100 Bullets), Chicanos follows Jalisco, an unattractive, short Mexican woman who follows her dream of becoming a private eye in the U.S. while trying to stay one step ahead of the bad luck which inevitably follows her.
Quiet little gem Why this series is not more popular is beyond me. I have a hard time finding it in the Southwest, a section of US with a huge Hispanic population and have had to special order it a couple of times. It is absoluely wonderful. The adventures of the little gnome-like PI will make you laugh and break your heart. Her adventures ring true with both negative and positive outcomes as opposed to similar quirky PIs such as Monk, Dresden or Psych who always seem to solve their cases regardless of how goofy the premise is.
I am pleasantly surprised how accurate the author and artist portray American/Mexican/Hispanic life given the fact that Trillo is European(?) and Risso is Argentinian. I am not familiar with life in NY, but as an Hispanic I laugh and appreciate all the many "peripecias" of poor A.Y. Jalisco and her courage in tackling a career path not usually suited for a woman, much less an ugly hispanic woman.
Pick a copy of both volume 1 and 2, you won't regret it. Anyway, I would buy anything that Risso illustrates even if it were two rocks talking together. His works are always masterpieces of shadow and characterization.
Chicanos Welcome to the tragi-comic life of Alejandrina Yolanda Jalisco...Alex, for short. And she is short. Short and rather ugly, and she knows it. Though this graphic novel--containing the first eight issues of the original Chicanos comic run--bills itself as some kind of private-eye collection, the cases Alex fiddles around with are the sort that get wrapped up by the end of each chapter (issue), and they don't really involve clues so much as dogged about-town gumshoeing. So don't buy this looking for some kind of Great Rivals of Sherlock Holmes experience. It's not about the whodunits, such as they are. It's about how much bad luck our Hobbit-esque heroine of the streets can encounter while trying to solve what wouldn't be so tough for any other detective who would get a lot more respect if he/she didn't look like, well, like A. Y. Jalisco.
But one does fall in love with Jalisco, as the city kicks her around for merely trying to hail a cab, or hang on to her purse, or arrive at a client interview on time--never mind what happens when she actually asks a few nosey questions! And the supporting cast are almost as entertaining, especially Guadalupe, both before and after his change of gender. Dreams and flashbacks are used to powerful effect. And the art by Eduardo Risso--of 100 Bullets fame--is emotionally jarring at times--though, take your eyes off his strange characters now and then to appreciate his lean but beautiful city-images.
So, trite little detective stories aside, I confess I was won over anyway--laughing out loud quite a few times, or feeling sorry for the hardluck main character who nevertheless emerges a figure of strength. I took a chance on this while reading more mainstream depictions of females in comic books (as in: superheroes), and I'm not sorry I did.
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Trevor
