Fogtown

Written by Andersen Gabrych
Art by Brad Rader

I'm of two minds when it comes to this entry in the Vertigo Crime imprint.  There is a lot I liked about Fogtown, but there were also elements of the plot that I found pretty irritating.

Fogtown is about Frank Grissel, who is introduced as your typical genre hardboiled private detective, in San Francisco in 1953.  The thing is, Frank is a homosexual, and is very deep in the closet about the whole thing, which leads him to be a jerk to his girlfriend (and, we find out later, his family).  This is the interesting part of the book, as Frank has to navigate his own secrets in the course of solving a case.

The problem with this book is the case itself.  It's clear that Gabrych saw the actual crime part of the book as secondary to exploring Frank's character, and that's fine, but the main plot, with its dead prostitutes, weird priests, dead bookkeepers, gigantic bodyguards, and transsexual smuggling is too overly complicated and interconnected to really work.  I wish that Gabrych had tried for a less ambitious plotline, and spent more time just working on Frank and his family.

Brad Rader's art is pretty good, although there are a few scenes that are hard to follow.  In all, this is a middle of the road entry to the Vertigo Crime Library, but it definitely had the potential to be one of the most interesting.