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A review by tasharobinson
Dying Is Easy by Joe Hill
3.0
Not my favorite of the Joe Hill derived graphic novels, maybe because the protagonist, Syd, is such a wearying type — a cynical, hard-bitten former detective turned not-very-good comedian who walks through life with a kind of cloud of resentment and failure around him, and turns too many of his interactions into bristling fights. There's certainly a kind of humor in the way he's drawn into trying to solve a murder where he's the most likely suspect, but the Fugitive-style "honest man on the run with no resources and every hand turned against him" plot has been done a lot, and in this case I found it hard to hook into, with both the victim and the protagonist being such seedy, unpleasant types, and their world being so one-note.
It feels like this all takes place in Noirworld, where everyone's on the take, there are no decent people, and it really does seem likely that everybody else in this graphic novel ganged up to kill the victim Orient Express style because no one could possibly like or support such an unrepentantly awful human being. I just had a hard time maintaining any interest in who left the guy dead when it was so obvious that anyone who interacted with him would want to kill him — given the Clue-style "Here's who did it — wait, no, here's who ACTUALLY did it" wrapup, it honestly seems like the eventual solution was just arbitrary, and could have been picked with a dartboard.
It feels like this all takes place in Noirworld, where everyone's on the take, there are no decent people, and it really does seem likely that everybody else in this graphic novel ganged up to kill the victim Orient Express style because no one could possibly like or support such an unrepentantly awful human being. I just had a hard time maintaining any interest in who left the guy dead when it was so obvious that anyone who interacted with him would want to kill him — given the Clue-style "Here's who did it — wait, no, here's who ACTUALLY did it" wrapup, it honestly seems like the eventual solution was just arbitrary, and could have been picked with a dartboard.