Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing/ Macon Blair and Joe Flood

Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing by Macon Blair and Joe Flood. graphic novel, mystery, noir, action, celestial setting 328 pages

Considering that my first little expedition into the world of graphic novels was the Scott Pilgrim series, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I would be intrigued enough by this genre to try again. Naturally, I could keep within my comfort zone and pick up another big-eyed, bright-and-bubbly graphic novel series similar to Scott Pilgrim, but a friend of mine told me that these types of graphic novels make up only about HALF of the genre. Before I could truly judge graphic literature as a whole, I needed to read something of the other GL variety--- something gritty, something violent, something with graphic violence that only a graphic novel could provide. Something like one of Frank Miller's Sin City books. However, if I really wanted to initiate myself as a graphic novel reader, I would need to stray away from the mainstream and read something that HADN'T been made into a movie. That's when Hellcity: The Whole Damned thing crossed the circulation desk.

Being a fan of classic literature like John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Dante Alighieri's "Inferno", it shouldn't be too surprising that stories set in the afterlife would be interesting to me. Hellcity combines classic mythology of Heaven and Hell with elements of the noir mystery genre to form an extremely entertaining mystery of celestial proportions. The book follows the adventures of Bill Tankersly, a private investigator-turned-damned soul condemned to the hellish urban sprawl of Hellcity for taking his own life after a serial killer murders his wife. Hellcity is a lot like any traditional fictional noir urban setting except along with the cliches of overwhelming crime and pollution as well as political corruption, there is a population of demons running the city as well as incessantly torturing the human inhabitants of Hellcity. The narrative opens with another cliche, the leggy and mysterious woman showing up at Tankersly's door with an offer too good to refuse--- a transfer to a less hellish area of hell in exchange for his services. Tankersly is assigned to shadow the Devil himself who is acting extremely strange (he's reading poetry and dressing like Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) in a time where Hellcity is on the verge of being overthrown by anarchist groups composed of the damned.

While I don't want to reveal any more of the story than this, I will tell you that Tankersly's quest for redemption is extremely addictive. As someone who prides himself in being able to predict events of stories, there were quite a few points where even I was thrown for a loop. Hellcity's inhabitants are also extremely entertaining and the memorable cast of characters only adds to the already involved story. If you've got a few hours to kill, I'd definitely pick this one up. I'll be damned if it's not totally worth your time...