Noir [Paperback]

Brian Azzarello (Author), Ed Brubaker (Author), Alex de Campi (Author), Others (Author, Artist), Eduardo Barreto (Author), Stefano Gaudiano (Author), Rick Geary (Author), Fabio Moon (Author), Gabriel Ba (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2009

The biggest names in comics crime fiction assemble for an anthology of original tales of murder and deceit, presented in glorious black and white! Comics luminaries Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets), Ed Brubaker (Criminal, Sleeper), David Lapham (Stray Bullets), Rick Geary (Treasury of Victorian Murder), Chris Offutt (HBO's True Blood), and Paul Grist (Kane) show why they're masters of the genre, while newer talents like Jeff Lemire (Essex County Trilogy), M. K. Perker (Cairo, Air), and Alex de Campi (Smoke) reveal their surprising dark sides. Aided and abetted by some of the most gifted slatherers of thick, black India ink in the field, such as Sean Phillips (Criminal), Eduardo Barreto (Cobb), Dean Motter (Mister X), and more, this gang is headed straight for the bad parts of town, and you're invited along for the ride!

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Muñoz and Sampayo’s gloriously depressing stories about NYC cop turned PI Alack Sinner quashed doubts that black-and-white comics were ideal for noir crime fiction as far back as the 1970s. If you don’t know the Argentine masters’ work, be convinced by this baker’s-dozen stories by best-in-the-business hands ranging from veteran true-crime specialist Rick Geary (A Treasury of Victorian Murder) to ace newcomer Jeff Lemire (Essex County). Turned tables are the order of the day, every piece ending with an about-face, though far from all the switcheroos can be seen coming—so no peeking ahead! Often the most sympathetic character comes out all right, and when it’s the farmer facing foreclosure in Lemire’s contribution or the underemployed Turkish immigrant in M. K. Perker’s, that’s OK. When SOBs receive sweet justice in David Lapham’s, Paul Grist’s, and Phillips and Barretto’s entries, it’s better. But when nothing is really resolved (Dean Motter’s Mister X vignette), the turnabout turns around (Offutt and Kano/Gaudiano’s The Last Hit), and something enormous is inadvertently started (Azzarello, Moon, and Ba’s The Bad Night), it’s sublime. --Ray Olson

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse; 1 edition (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595823581
• ISBN-13: 978-1595823588
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid collection of crime stories, October 26, 2009

By 

R. SHARIFF "rayhans1282" (Jamaica, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Noir (Paperback)

I love comic anthologies. Remember the anthology boom from Vertigo comics...Weird War Tales, Weird Western Tales, Gangland? I remember them. Now not all the stories in anthologies are winner but I enjoyed the collaboration of so many different writers and artists. "Noir" from Dark Horse continues in the same vein.

"Noir" features stories by the best comics writers in the business today, Azzarello, Lemire, Brubaker, Lapham, Grist and Motter to name a few. Also features art by Risso, Phillips, Lemire etc. You get 13 stories in total and each story on average is about 6-7 pages. Also, the art is black and white similar to the Vertigo Crime Lines books. Now that the semantics are out of the way, I wanna talk about the stories themselves. All of them in my opinion are winners. Lapham's story in particular was a little disturbing simply because the characters were so messed up to begin with. Brubaker turns in a solid presentation as do Lemire and Grist. I thought the weakest was Motter's Mister X story. Azzarello turns in a tongue-in-cheek story that has a surprising twist (I am not gonna spoil it).

Overall, the collection is solid with very little to complain about. The price is more than reasonable for a collection of short stories featuring the best in the business. I felt that the work here was stronger than the Vertigo Lines entries and is cheaper. My recommendation--definitely pick this up.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slim anthology of short crime comics, December 10, 2009

By 

K. W. Schreiter (Conshohocken, PA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Noir (Paperback)

This slim, black-and-white Dark Horse paperback collects thirteen short modern crime comics from a wide cast of creators. The pages are smaller than those of a normal comic book/TPB, and the stories each are about ten pages in length. Highlights include Jeff Lemire's "The Old Silo", which could have been a dark segment from his "Essex County" graphic novel trilogy. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' six-page collaboration resembles their monthly "Criminal" comic book series. Other highlights include the stories "The Last Hit", "Blood On My Hands", "The Albanian" and "The New Me". Most of the remainder of the anthology was disappointing, ranging from overly disturbing (Lapham) to nearly incomprehensible (DeCampi/Petrus). Limited by this volume's emphasis on brevity, some of the fragmented plots and characters might benefit from a longer treatment. Crime comic fanatics will undoubtedly want this, but for most other I recommend instead trying a full-length TPB from one of these creators.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fails to Live Up to Other Works, June 25, 2011

By 

JSmalls - See all my reviews

This review is from: Noir (Paperback)

I am a fan of both Brian Azzarello and Ed Brubaker's work. This collection failed in my mind because many of the pieces did not live up to either the 100 Bullets writer's work or the Incognito writer's. That said, Azzarello's story in this collection is perhaps one of the best pieces of writing I have seen this year because of the surprise ending.