Newburn #1, from Image, begins by showing us a single lamp, illuminating the back of one of its characters. It’s darkly ‘comics noir’, immediately.
Easton Newburn is a private eye. He works both sides of the street, representing major crime families. When a man is murdered after stealing from his own crime family, Newburn is all over the scene. Butting in, pushing his way through the red tape and through the yellow crime scene tape too.
Newburn is living well, with a penthouse view of the city. He knows the town and the players, and his strong crime-solving instincts do him justice. Can he figure out what is going on in this latest murder?
Jacob Phillips illustrates this detective drama with a good eye for telling the story ‘straight’. The camera angles, the pacing of the closeups and medium shots, the moments of confrontation are all well-executed here. Phillips uses a thin black line with minimal blacks or crosshatching. The colour palette is effectively not fussy, it conforms to the narrative, not calling undue attention to itself.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the flow of the story is broken and shattered by the imposition of full black pages of “Emily’s Journal”. Acting as info dumps and filling in the back story, these blocks of text, for me, interrupt the narrative. The dates of the journal entries appear haphazard, and I didn’t catch who Emily actually is. Should I have read more carefully? I would have preferred that the information be sewn into the story rather than added in the form of text entries.
Included in the issue is a backup story. It’s five pages of crime drama, unrelated (??) to the main Newburn tale. Writer is Nadia Shammas, art by Ziyed Yusuf Ayoub, and letters by Frank Cvetkovic. It’s well crafted, nicely drawn in a heavier line, and just getting underway when it ends…. oh well.
See you back at the scene for issue two!
Image Comics, Newburn #1, $3.99 for 27 pages of content. Mature
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