Trilogy USA

There’s a tradition in comics, especially from un-American practitioners, of setting stories in dreamland Americas – metafictional USAs jerry-rigged from the endless torrent of images and information pouring out of the US media factories. Desperate Dan, Lucky Luke, Judge Dredd, Alec Sinner and a hundred more like them live in tailored emigrant fantasies that barely, if at all, reflect reality, but do nevertheless, sometimes, cast back something that can illuminate the place.

It’s an acknowledged phenomenon, commented on by our late editor Martin Skidmore and others and deployed by Trilogy USA’s publishers, Dark Horse, to drum up some passing trade for their latest outing for veteran Belgian cartoonist Hermann and his son, the writer, Yves H.

The book’s cover blurb promises ‘an unflinchingly satirical look at the dark side of the American soul [..] a vision of the US sharpened through a European lens.’ And, ready for, maybe some beautiful outsiders parable, like say, Paris, Texas or even Robocop we steal our way in, to find… a tedious, overwritten collection of wann be hardboiled faux noir and gangster clichés so assiduously adhered to that there are genuinely no surprises whatsoever in the comic and not the barest hint of humour, let alone satire.

It’s a bitter journey for the reader lured in by the luscious visuals provided by Hermann senior – who’s beautiful palette and expressive figure work go some small way to mitigating this truly terrible piece of work – but less surprising for those foolish enough to have chumped up their hard earned for a copy of Station 13, Dark Horse’s previous English language outing for Hermann and Son.

Reading Station 13 should have provided aversion enough. Yves H’s penchant for character-free plotting and unresolved ‘suspense’ clanged worse than a post-code EC knock-off and should have prepared the more cautious reader for greater disappointment to come – Hermann’s earlier self-scripted strips, Towers of Bois-Maury, Jeremiah, etc.,  though never literary masterpieces, at least made sense – while Station 13’s ludicrous ‘time travelling nazi zombies in the Arctic’ schlock so strains at any kind of coherence that only paternal love could have forgiven it.

And that perhaps touching, though misplaced, faith in his son’s ability to spin a story, manifests itself in Trilogy USA’s collection of three previously published, though untranslated albums in one fat, glossy, volume.

The first, Blood Ties, from its title on in, refuses to leave any cliché unturned as it desperately hoes the much depleted soil of LA noir, while at the same time ignoring the snappier fundamentals of the hard-boiled tale, such as pace and suspense.

A similar lack of vigour and imagination sucks the life out of Manhattan Beach, 1957, a confusing, confused, ramble around some more popular and over used tropes, including Elvis as phantom confidant, sinister goings-on behind picket fences, and vicious redneck cops.

Last up in the ‘trilogy’ is The Girl From Ipanema, the most physically over written comic I can remember since Herge, or Claremont’s epic declamations crushed characters into claustrophobic submission beneath giant word balloons and captions. Having forced myself to complete the previous two, awful, awful stories, the daunting density of the text filling the pages was more than I could take, and I gave up, but before I did was happy to write the story off as more of the same noirish, convoluted crap as before.

Which is a shame, because Hermann’s art is generally a pleasure to look at, and despite some odd ways with people’s faces his characters are good actors, but otherwise this comic fails to live up to it’s own hype – teaching us nothing about America, or about satire, or about life. Probably worth avoiding.