Dark Blue is a decent, sharply written graphic novel. Like The Watchmen, this story almost completely avoids text except in speech bubbles, but the quality of Ellis's writing and the sharpness of the black-and-white drawings convey the story's message perfectly. The plot is well-paced and goes through a few twists and turns--enough to keep it interesting, most of the way through.

But I had some big problems with this graphic novel. The world that Ellis describes is a dark and violent one, but it seems more sensationalistic than anything else. At every stage Ellis seemed intent on shocking me more, starting with the first few pages (with the interrogation scene). One particularly gratuitous scene takes place when the protagonist brutally beats up a pimp while a prostitute very bloodily gives birth in the background. Technically the scene is great: the panels switch viewpoints exactly as I would have wanted them to, and despite a lack of sound-effects bubbles the graphics made vivid the sheer force of the beating (and the chaos of the moment). But why was it necessary to put a live birth in the background?

Now, I don't really have a problem with violence per se; after all, I love Frank Miller's Sin City series (which are, come to think of it, also black-and-white), despite the incredible amount of gore spilled on those pages. But in Miller's work none of it ever seems gratuitous; at the very least, he gives his characters plausible motives for undergoing such bloodiness by giving them moral backbones so stiff that, more often than not, they're broken by the end. Also, the city in Miller's work seems like a richer, more complex place: sure, there's violence and evil in the world, but people also try to make the best of it, and there are pockets of goodness there too. In Dark Blue, on the other hand, I found any hint of subtlety missing.

This could, of course, be due entirely to the major plot twist of the book, which I won't reveal here. But a few words about that twist: several recent science-fiction movies have really taken away the impact that such a twist can have. Sure, it's still surprising, perhaps even shocking, but an author has to do more than just reveal such a twist if it's to be compelling. Ellis unfortunately doesn't do much more with it than show it to us.

And the reason he can't do more ties in to my last and biggest problem with this book: it's way, way too simple. The structure of the plot has no real complications: the protagonist has a problem, plot twist, the protagonist's problems are solved. (That was not an over-simplification.) Even the brief period of anguish that the protagonist feels didn't seem drawn-out enough for me. And the resolution, while interesting, also seemed sort of abrupt.

Hmm. I've made it sound that I really didn't like this book. I guess the problem is that it could have been so much more. Up to--and even a good ways into--the plot twist, I found the book immensely gripping. But the way things wrapped up seemed a little pat--and I know that Ellis is capable of much, much better. So I would recommend reading it, but don't go in expecting too much.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu