The Black Beetle #3

"No Way Out" (3 of 4)
by Francesco Francavilla

If Black Beetle's real identity seemed cloaked in earlier issues, it's even more so here.  Continuing his investigation as a gentleman patron of Fierro's night spot, the Coco Club, the Beetle quickly orders a bourbon and strikes up a flirtation with the club's singer, a stunning woman named Ava—an allusion to Ava Gardner as Julie in MGM's 1951 Show Boat remake, a black woman passing as white to keep from being charged with miscegenation for her marriage to her white husband, and whose most famous song "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" she was just singing.  It's a scene that could have resonated far more than it did, a heated and interracial flirtation ostensibly in 1941, and Francavilla makes them charming but little else.  And, largely because of his "job," as the Beetle calls it, he offers up nothing sincerely, only a false name—Ray Steves—and swift lie.  Even, we later discover, his "face" is another mask.  It seems the Beetle is nothing but masks.

Their romantic meeting is cut short when the Beetle eyes from across the room a man who looks just like Fierro, presumed dead in Spencer's Irish bar fire.  Though he chases the gangster into an alley, his pursuit is cut short by a band of thugs.  The remainder of the issue tracks the Beetle's detective work to confirm his suspicion that Fierro, colorfully nicknamed Faccia d'Angelo, is still alive.  And, for the most part, this portion of the story is serviceable but unimpressive as a mystery.  It follows the right breadcrumbs but is disappointingly sequential, and it thereby loses some of its vision of the whole, i.e., it can't see the forest for the path.  Its conclusion, however, promises to recover this vision, reassembling the pieces of the mystery—only some of which are recalled in this issue—into a coherent story:  the Hollow Lizard; the identity of Labyrinto, particularly if we are less inclined to take the Black Beetle's assumptions for truth; the conspiracy surrounding the Spencer's fire; the mysterious Angitia disciple, whom we see briefly in the intermezzo, and his connection to Antonia Howard; and even, perhaps, what all this has to do with Nazi werewolves.

As ever, Francavilla's artwork and design is immaculate.  His color schemes are beautiful and variable, and his visual pacing perfectly matches his storytelling.  Each issue has had a slightly different panel design scheme, and here it exploits the box, both within and across the page boundary, to great effect.  However Francavilla may conclude his pulp mystery, he's certainly established a tone and aesthetic with storytelling legs, and a hero whose own mystery is even more intriguing than his quarry's.