Dig this, daddy-o! A 1950s Greenwich Village beatnik seeks love and spiritual enlightenment, but instead finds himself embroiled in a mystery involving a murdered exotic dancer, a thrill-killing mobster, a hopped-up bebop jazz drummer, a ruthless Hollywood starlet, and a crooked cop. This cat is on an espresso-fueled, riffs-n-stiffs, one-way trip to nowheresville, baby!
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
A noir crime story and a beatnik/hipster ramble should work together like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy, since they're both native to the 1950s at least that's what appears to be the idea behind Ricketts's Nowheresville comics series, collected here. Unfortunately, both genres are riddled with cliches, nearly every one of which this book succumbs to, and Ricketts's expository dialogue delivered in mock-hipster slang ("make no mistake the man is blissed out on a Zen kick") eventually becomes unintentionally hilarious. There's not much to the plot: angel-headed half-Japanese hipster Chic Mooney wanders through a '50s urban underworld populated by bebop drummers, babes with guns, tough cops and mysterious corpses. Ricketts's b&w art is fabulously stylized and appropriate for the setting, with enormous swatches of black everywhere and the crazy, hard angles of circa-1959 design. He can draw a bombshell in a sweater, a silhouetted bridge or a sleazy cocktail lounge like nobody's business. But his narrative twists its chronology into knots, which should be intriguing but is merely confusing. It doesn't help that the ending makes almost no sense, and that several crucial scenes are obscured by art that doesn't communicate what's going on. It's a period piece, stylish but as empty as an abandoned diner.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From the Publisher
Mark Ricketts has been drawing comics since 1991. His work includes International Cowgirl Magazine, Book of Twilight, and Nowheresville, as well as contributions to The Lost, Urban Legends and Occurrences: The Illustrated Ambrose Bierce.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Noir meets beat at the corner at midnight,
By a fifties fan (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Nowheresville (Paperback)
Lots of cartoonists drop a few "daddy-os" and think they've brought back the beat generation, or toss in some tilted shadows and think they've single-handedly revived film noir. But Ricketts actually knows his stuff, and he makes these two disparate styles sing in "Nowheresville," his salute to the two coolest trends of the '50s. Never stooping to simple kitsch, "Nowheresville" is instead an exciting, complex examination of guilt and redemption. Rickett's art is the equal to his writing, evoking the bygone era with simplicity and style.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cool Cannot Be Learned. It Can, However, Be Chronicled.,
By
This review is from: Nowheresville (Paperback)
Hey cats and kitties, take a stroll way down-town, all the way down to the village inhabited by the cool and crazy, by the hip and hep, and by those who desire enlightenment and knowledge through the smooth flavor of Starlight smoke and the bang of the be-bop. But watch it, dad, 'cause it's also home to all the rolling stones, a generation driven wild by the beat and the thrills, drinking down life hard and double-fisted, from the poetry of the 'niks at the cafe to the pop-pop-pop at the burlesque. "Nowheresville," written and drawn by Mark Ricketts, is a murder mystery set squarely -- but not 'square'ly -- in the New York beatnik scene. The strangulation of a pin-up girl leads the chain-smoking Chic Mooney and his hip friend Mr. Queeg on journey through the underbelly and the underworld of post-war New York as Mooney is forced to examine his own history in order to dodge his inevitable future. Ricketts takes full advantage of the graphic novel format here, as the layout and design of each page adds to the reading experience. The black and white art is moody but clear -- each character is given some visual trait which makes it easy to distinguish their identity even in the most stylized panels. It's also a pretty good mystery, with a lot of seemingly dissparate plot threads woven together in the end in a way that's pretty hard to predict, but plays out fairly. Ricketts' writing is engrossing; the story advances quickly, moving from scene to scene without waste or wringing of hands. It's hard to put down once you get into it. "Nowheresville" is a mass market paperback-sized OGN, and I think anyone who likes a good mystery will thoroughly enjoy this book. Just remember that Queen Starlight is always watching.
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