The Dark Goodbye Volume 1 [Paperback]

Drew Rausch (Author), Frank Marraffino (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dark Goodbye | Publication Date: April 10, 2007

Hired to locate a missing girl, Detective Max "Mutt" Mason discovers deeper malignant forces at work. Femmes fatale soon give way to strange creatures older than humanity, all bent on remaking our world as their own. Mason wants answers, but the solution to this mystery may go beyond mere greed and betrayal--leading the detective to the brink of horrifying realms which man was never meant to tresspass... From the creative team of Frank Marraffino and Drew Rausch comes a brilliant fusion of hard boiled noir and and weird horror, all taking place on the mean streets of one very sinful city.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Private eye Max "Mutt" Mason is enlisted by the sultry Lavinia Tillinghast to locate her errant twin sister, a mystery woman with secrets to spare. He soon finds himself thrust into an unimaginable sequence of events that, if unchecked, will lead to the return of arcane elder gods and the end of the world. Mason's investigation is fraught with chilling family secrets, corpses—both eviscerated and resuscitated— and a full slate of other obscure happenings: kidnappings, giant carnivorous plants, women unwillingly sacrificed to the lusts of extra-dimensional horrors and the resulting half-human offspring of those unions. With its Leviathan-sized tentacled wigglies, diabolic rituals, tough guy fisticuffs, books of forbidden knowledge and even a creepy asylum, this heartfelt geekfest merrily blends the genres of crime noir and H.P. Lovecraftian horror fiction. Marraffino's homage-drenched script shamelessly piles on the clichés and in-jokes (the most groan-inducing of which is a secretary named "Miss Katonic"), while Rausch's jittery artwork achieves the perfect balance between the cartoony and the outright disturbing, resulting in an enjoyable romp. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The first frame shows a buoy in a big-city harbor; the next, some tall buildings; the next, a shorter commercial building, a shadow in a third-floor window. At the raised sash, we meet Max "Mutt" Murphy, PI, involuntarily bowing. Max likes his Scotch, y'see. A prospective client, a looker, shows up, and Max takes the case of finding her missing sister, who's possibly with her personal physician, Dr. Akeley. He finds her, alright, and much more he hadn't bargained for. The name Akeley and a periodically glimpsed comic book entitled Necronomoman tip off omnivorous pulp fans that this is a Lovecraft parody as well as a noir parody. While Marraffino is no slouch at tough-guy snappy comebacks and portentous innuendos, the star of this series opener is Rausch, who makes the book a disorienting visual extravaganza by merging the wriggling baroque textures of graveyard-humor cartoonist Gahan Wilson, the splatter effects of horror-comics artist Basil Wolverton, the eccentric perspectives of expressionist cinema and Russian constructivist photography, and a lantern-jawed trace of Dick Tracy. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: TokyoPop (April 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598169726
• ISBN-13: 978-1598169720
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,054,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome addition to Cthulhu mythos manga, September 6, 2010

By 

Matthew T. Carpenter (Peoria, IL, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dark Goodbye Volume 1 (Paperback)

The Dark Goodbye is an American manga-ish book from Tokyopop, 1 from 2007 and 2 from 2008. I say manga-ish because although the size, price ($9.99 for 192 pages) and page count are typical, the book reads front to back, left to right, unlike the Japanese convention for manga. Also the art is not classic manga.

The author is Frank Marraffino with art by Drew Rausch; I don't know much about either one. Unfortunately after two books, Tokyopop pulled the plug and also still holds the rights, so the creators can't even take their creation elsewhere.

These are clearly Cthulhu mythos manga, in ways both large and small. As is typical for manga, there is a lot of not so subtle humor, but there is also considerable horror. Max "Mutt Mason is a gumshoe who lives in a bottle. His secretary is Melissa Katonic (Miss Katonic - get it?). In the city of Gatemouth (get it?) Exham is the big company. The kids read a comic book, Necronomoman. Gill (get it?) tends bar at the Great Old Pub. You get the idea. Mutt is hired by the lovely femme fatale Livinia (get it?) Tillinghast to find her missing twin sister, last seen by the homeopath, Dr. Akeley. What follows is a sequence where Mutt gets in deeper and deeper over his head, as the body count mounts alarmingly. My view was the book was a riff on themes lifted from the Dunwich Horror.

The Dark Goodbye is a welcome addition to Cthulhu mythos manga, still not a common species in the US. The story was entertaining and the art was enjoyable, with pretty good mythos beasties. It does not displace Arkham Woods as my favorite but is clearly better than Taimashin #1.

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, May 31, 2009

By 

Ashley Perry (Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dark Goodbye Volume 1 (Paperback)

This is the first book of its kind that I have ever read. It was actually pretty good. It's a horror story that was easy to follow with a surprising ending.

4.0 out of 5 stars Striking Art, Sharp Narration, January 13, 2008

By 

David Gallaher (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dark Goodbye Volume 1 (Paperback)

While a little light on plotting, Frank Marraffino's narrative voice shines through in this supernatural pulp thriller. Mr. Marraffino is aided by the deeply chilling, but always enjoyable art of Drew Rausch who adds an element of abject horror to the story.