Case Files: Sam & Twitch #1 - 6: Have You Seen Me?

Written by Marc Andreyko
Art by Scott Morse

I'd made the second Sam & Twitch series the object of a back-issue hunt over the last few months, and filled in enough gaps at last week-end's Fan Appreciation Comic-Con here in Toronto that I could finally start working my way through Marc Andreyko's run with the two detectives.

His opening arc, 'Have You Seen Me?' is pretty experimental and interesting.  Each page is divided into three panels (something that Morse seems to enjoy doing, as it's the format that he used in his recent Strange Science Fantasy), and each of the three frames is set in a different time in the story, covering the beginning, middle, and end.  In the first issue, we see Detective Twitch get involved in a case that cuts close to home in the first panel, attend a funeral for what we quickly learn is a family member in the second panel, and lie around a prison cell in the final one.  This technique is continued throughout the six issues, and in issue six, we see the top panel catch up with where the middle one was at the beginning, and the same happens between the middle and bottom.  Makes sense?  It's kind of confusing when you're reading it, but it forces you to pay a lot of attention to the story, and to make a pile of inferences and leaps of logic, not all of which are borne out by the story.

What I found especially cool here is the way that Morse slowly blends the colour scheme of each separate timeline into the next one, to create a nice chromatic consistency.  It's tempting to lay out the whole story in chronological order and read it again.

I did have a few issues with some of the story elements, although it's impossible to discuss them without spoiling some surprises (and even though the comics are 8 years old, I don't want to do that).  I'm not too clear on how a couple of characters returned to the tale, but I also concede that I may just have missed something while reading.  Andreyko does a good job of maintaining a level of consistency with Bendis's run with these characters, while pushing the book in new directions.