The Private Eye #3

written by Brian K. Vaughan
art by Marcos Martin
with Muntsa Vicente

Fortunately for our P. I. protagonist and Raveena McGill, De Guerre's masked hit men are terrible shots.  Impeded by their unusual gasmasks, which keep fogging up from their breath, neither could get a clean shot.  Short only a left middle finger and a right ear lobe respectively, P. I. and Raveena make their escape by tumbling out a window and bribing their way onto a city bus filled with anonymously costumed people.  His office—and record collection—and her apartment were torched soon after, and though his identity remains concealed, from De Guerre as well as us readers, Taj's shady past is hard on his heels.

De Guerre may be ruthless—which his actions thus far and the icy, fearful welcomes he gets from his former associates make indesputable—but his motives and agenda are difficult to tease out.  He has revolutionary ambitions, desiring to, in his words, "change a few minds" (The Private Eye #3: 23) but with a huge missile.

Despite its thematic immediacy and the emotional gravity of Taj's murder, The Private Eye maintains a surprising degree of levity throughout.  If De Guerre's quip at the assassination and forensic failures of his masked henchmen—"Whoever said you can't have a revolution without the French should be guillotined" (22)—weren't delightful enough, the perseverance of Blockbuster Video following the crash of the internet cloud is plenty to incite a few giggles.

Marcos Martin's artwork continues to improve with each issue.  Although some pages still have oddly placed negative space, e. g., the flat space behind the door to his room (4), the overall quality is very kinetic and utilizes dramatic perspective shifts to excellent effect.  As ever, the details riddled throughout crowd and street scenes continue to impress and to flesh out Vaughan's futuristic world in subtle and meaningful ways.

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The Private Eye #2

written by Brian K. Vaughan
art by Marcos Martin
with Muntsa Vicente

And just like that what started as a simple background check for a formerly wayward rich woman turns into an off-the-books homicide investigation.  The Private Eye has made no effort to disguise its villain:  cult leader, wanna-be apocalyptic savior, murderer, and shadowy conspirator De Guerre.  Taj McGill's poking around into her own past brought him back into her life, and he repays her by stabbing her at the conclusion of the previous issue.  "Patrick Immelman," the P. I. protagonist, stumbles on the police circus at the murder site and promptly decides to drop Taj's case altogether to avoid run-ins with the law and, more importantly, the criminal underground who might actually recognize his password.

However, The Private Eye #2 really picks up when Taj's sister, and "Immelman"'s referral for Taj herself, Raveena McGill surprises the investigator in his own office.  Thinking he is responsible for her sister's death, Raveena attacks him.  Ultimately, her threats seem somewhat half-hearted since it takes very little for "Immelman" to calm her.  Their relationship, teased in the previous issue when he joked that he'd taken her case because she was hot, is considerably more familiar than I would otherwise have anticipated between the P. I. and his clients.  He even removes, temporarily, the dark make-up mask covering his eyes to demonstrate his sincerity, and she responds with a full-body embrace.  They have a surprisingly easy rapport and honesty, refreshing in a world of calculated deception and well-kept secrets.

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The Private Eye #1

written by Brian K. Vaughan
art by Marcos Martin
with Muntsa Vicente

We live in an era in which privacy is a small virtue, in which openness about one's private life is considered a mark of honesty, and in which the details of our identity and our lives are kept online in virtual space.  Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente posit a future a few generations down the road in which that "cloud," that veil of security in a digital world, is eradicated.  The information cloud—not unlike the real estate bubble—has burst.  And vinyl records and public payphones have resurfaced.  Identity and privacy are supremely valued, and pseudonyms and disguises have correspondingly proliferated.

Enter our protagonist, a mostly illegal private eye/paparazzo tasked with uncovering the truth behind others' identities...for a price.  He takes the case of a beautiful young woman, Taj McGill, wanting to know just how much of her past others will be able to uncover, but in a surprise twist, one I can say with all honesty I had not anticipated, her past catches up with her, and she finds herself the victim of her former acquaintances, specifically a sketchy Frenchman suitably named De Guerre, a clever nod to the French term nom de guerre—i.e., a pseudonym—and his belligerent personality.

While I'm not overly fond of Martin's illustration style, which I find overly angular and unimpressively designed, there is no doubt that his unique vision of a future in which costume is both expression and disguise is delightfully variable, sadly untrue for his facial expressions which emote poorly.  It nevertheless has a look generally well suited to the story, and given the excellence of a few of his panels, I'm willing to grant some leeway for some of his more uninspiring pages.

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Note:  Both Vaughan and Martin received a good chuckle in their Afterword:  "When I told Marcos I was thinking about a comic set in a futuristic U.S. that no longer used the internet, his first suggestion was that we should make the story exclusively available online.  This is what it's like collaborating with Marcos Martin."

[March 2013]