posted 09-04-2001 08:54 AM               

I keep going through the same process with Brian Michael Bendis' books. I spend a few weeks looking at it in the store. I tell myself something like, "Dave, you don't really need to buy ANOTHER crime book. You don't even LIKE crime stories." The book keeps staring me in the face. Amazon keeps recommending it to me. I break down like the weakling I am and buy it, then spend several hours tearing through it one sitting. Then I sit down and write a review like this one, that says, "Good book. Buy it."

The cycle was particularly extreme in the case of Jinx: The Definitive Collection, which is easily Bendis' largest single work to date. This book could be used as a weapon, in a pinch, and the size was both intimidating and attractive at the same time. I kept putting off reading it because I never felt like I had the time; but once I did finally open it, I couldn't put it down. Jinx is the story of two small time con men and one burned out bounty hunter who have a chance to make one huge score and maybe change the course of their lives. Much like me and my Bendis buying habit, though, they find themselves sucked into past patterns of behavior and haunted by past mistakes. (For the record, though, all of my Bendis purchases have been legal, and have never involved any violence other than to my bank balance.)

The title character, Jinx Alameda, is a very effective female protagonist, strong and tough but not robotic. She is world weary and tired of life chasing down bail jumpers, with good reason. That reason is hinted at in the opening scene, a scene that repeats several times throughout the book before Jinx explains its meaning to Goldfish, one of the con men (and the lead character of Bendis' Goldfish, which is the next book I'll be suckered into buying). The revelation is a double payoff - the events themselves provide a sudden burst of insight into Jinx's character, and the telling of the story is a major milestone in Jinx and Goldfish's developing romantic relationship. This is just one example of how Bendis knows How to Tell a Story.

Bendis is also one of the most innovative artists around, ranking with Channel Zero's Brian Wood as a pioneer of the art of graphic design within comics. Bendis makes extensive use of xerography, photographs, photo referenced drawings, and other textures to create Jinx's dark, surreal world of drug dealers, mobsters and petty criminals. There's one four page homage sequence to classic Marvel artist Sal Buscema, where Bendis lays off the heavy blacks and other design elements and relies on simple black lines and plenty of open white space. The contrast when he leaps back into his typical style is amazing. And while the art is heavily stylized, Bendis never loses sight of the need for the pictures to convey character. How these characters sit, stand, look at each other and so on is crucial, and Bendis' use of photo models (including himself as the model for Columbia, the other crook) ensures their individuality.

Jinx also showcases plenty of Bendis' signature style of dialogue; the book is fully of witty conversations and broken, fractures sentences that evoke the style of playwrights and filmmakers like David Mamet and Woody Allen. There's one discussion of the merits of letterboxed motion pictures that sounds eerily like a conversation I've had at least one too many times.