Abbott #1
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Story: Saladin Ahmed
Pencils: Sami Kivelä
Inks: Sami Kivelä
Colors: Jason Wordie
Letters: Jim Campbell
Abbott is one of those comics that defies categorization. Is it a noir detective story, a horror story, a period piece, or a commentary on race and gender issues? Perhaps it is all of these mixed together to create something fresh and exciting that can’t be placed into a pre-defined category for ease of explanation.
Artist Sami Kivelä sets the mood with a combination of standard comic panel grids to propel the main plot. To these, he adds unique, 1970’s style pop-art layouts for certain scenes that evoke the artistic style of 1972 Detroit, during which the story takes place, as well as otherworldly, creepy, open layouts for the more supernatural scenes. The change in styles throughout the book adds to the unsettling feeling one gets while reading the story. As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn into the world and becomes part of the discovery that main protagonist Elena Abbott goes through as she learns that an unexplainable, horrific event from her past has returned to haunt her.
Small touches in the art create a mood and define the character better than pages of words could do. Smoke is used as a unifying device throughout, as Abbott is a chain smoker, and hardly a page goes by without her signature cigarette and the smoke it causes obscuring part of the background, almost as if announce to the reader, “You can’t see everything that’s happening here.”
A sequence where Abbott, a reporter, walks down a Detroit street past more well-known newspaper offices such as the Detroit Free-Press and the Detroit News, to the smaller Detroit Daily, where she is employed, subtly conveys that Abbott, an outspoken black female journalist in a field dominated by white men, is not wanted by the corporately owned papers in town. Another scene later in the issue shows Abbott at home at the end of a long day, putting on a classic John Coltrane record, pouring one of her nightly glasses of brandy, and falling asleep in her chair while the refrains of “A love supreme…” come wafting out of her record player, and lead to a combination of memory and dream sequence on the next page. It’s a beautiful sequence that explains Abbott’s character so well, and writer Saladin Ahmed wisely chooses to forgo the typical internal narration that often accompanies scenes like this and just let the art speak for itself.
Kivelä’s art is paired with gorgeous coloring by Jason Wordie. Abbott explains at the beginning of the story that there are two different Detroits: one white, one black. That juxtaposition is carried throughout the book as the story shows both the white and black sides of Detroit, as well as the city during the day and during the night, and the mundane side of the city contrasted to the supernatural elements that are continually creeping up as the story progresses. Wordie uses different combinations of colors to illustrate these various sides of Detroit, while also staying true to the “pop art” movement of the era. Throughout the book, Wordie tends to use subdued, muted tones to the colors to evoke a sense of age.
While the plot for this first issue at first seems to be of the “investigative journalist uncovers a horrific secret” trope, what really sets it apart is the characterization of Elena Abbott combined with the period setting and the commentary on the racism and sexism of the time, which has obvious implications to the current cultural climate. Abbott’s interactions with the police, her boss, her ex-husband, and other members of the press perfectly illustrate the time period and draw the reader into 1972 Detroit. The graphic format of comics, with its combination of words, art, and colors is the perfect medium for this type of story, conveying the mood, atmosphere, and character in a way that a standard prose novel never could.
Martin Thomas
martin@comicattack.net
