by Eddie Campbell, based on a screenplay by C. Gaby Mitchell, 2007, First Second

Very nice mystery/western comic with great artwork from Eddie Campbell whose work in Alan Moore's From Hell propelled him to international stardom.

Review from Jog - The Blog:

Sitting here now around the tail end of the publisher’s third wave of releases (the fourth wave has been announced, by the way), totaling an even 18 books with all heads counted, The Black Diamond Detective Agency is a unique in two major areas: (1) it’s largely a straightforward, ‘realistically’-rendered action/mystery comic; and (2) it’s a comics adaptation of a pre-existing movie screenplay, written by C. Gaby Mitchell and handled by producer Bill Horberg. The movie has not yet been made, but Eddie Campbell’s comic is all ready to go.

The book is also unique among the artist’s works. Campbell is no stranger to adaptation, mind you. After all, his prior book for First Second, The Fate of the Artist, concluded with an adaptation of an O. Henry short story, which the artist seamlessly folded into his mix of themes and intuitive visual cues. Prior to that, we’ve had the works eventually collected as A Disease of Language, transformations of Alan Moore’s spoken-word performances into swirls of word and picture. However, Campbell has never quite matched his style with the quick-moving thrills of a streamlined slice of action movie entertainment before - obviously there were action sequences in various bits of the Bacchus saga, or the likes of Batman: The Order of Beasts, but they’d always been contained in a Campbell-created capsule of austere intrigue and mythic conversational play, one where he could set the parameters right from the start. Here, the parameters had to be reconfigured.

Thus, we have the saga of John Hardin, a haunted man of obvious mystery, and the murderous train bombing that obliterates the peace of his life and summons the detectives of the title, one of those private investigation services that could grow to the size of an army back around the close of the 19th century, which is where the book is set. The Black Diamond detectives think Hardin exploded that train, and maybe facilitated the disappearance of a very important mystery safe traveling therein. The detectives are at a bit of a loss themselves - they’re always clashing with federal authorities, like the Secret Service, and don’t even have access to the basic knowledge of what the stolen goods they’re chasing actually are. But then, the truth was as flexible a thing back then as it was now.

As will come to no surprise to those who’ve read First Second’s Free Comic Book Day giveaway, Hardin eludes the detectives’ grasps, and goes on the run. Have I mentioned his beloved wife has also left him, at just the same time as the bombing? Neither of them were quite what they seemed to be, and throughout Our Anti-Hero’s journey, several additional transformations take place. Hardin adopts two additional names. At different times, he poses as two other members of the book’s cast. At one point -- and this would no doubt be the trailer’s ‘hook’ if this were to become a major motion picture -- he actually joins the very detective agency that’s chasing him, utilizing their smarts and resources to accomplish his own ends, which after all does involve solving the mystery.

All of this is possible through the uncertainty of memory, identity and technology, a theme that Campbell ably carries through this comics incarnation of the material. The book is divided into two chapters, plus a prologue and epilogue. The chapters are titled “Frames” and “Secrets.” That first one is particularly pregnant with possibility - Hardin is apparently ‘framed’ for a crime he didn’t commit, he constantly stares at the world through the frames of glasses (a classic comics symbol for secret identity), and he moves freely thanks to the low quality of the drawings that frame his image for the newspapers. Eventually, Hardin and the detectives run in with a lovely, alcohol-soaked sketch artist and photographer, the only person around who seems capable of harnessing something evoking the truth in the frames of her own creations (an interesting character indeed for Campbell, who himself has worked as a courtroom artist, sketching the likenesses of the accused, for occasional use on the news).