A review by rbreade
The Banks by Roxane Gay

While the art works well enough, its the writing by Gay, which I was looking forward to, that disappointed. These Southside Chicago thieves rarely use contractions, making their dialogue sound oddly stiff and formal. Worse, the dialogue is often explanatory and expository, bottoming out in a panel where the youngest of the three thieves, left alone in a target's apartment, is shown with the target's phone in her hands and is given this dialogue: "I just need to leave this code in his phone and we will be able to track Mencken, wherever he goes, whatever he does."

Why is she narrating her action when there's no one around to hear it? Answer: she's doing it for the reader's benefit, the worst sort of expository dialogue. Why didn't Gay use a thought balloon, which would have mitigated the obviousness of the exposition, though not entirely eliminated it? Or, better, a voice-over caption, carrying dialogue from an earlier, off-page scene where the trio are planning the mission? That would have been the elegant solution. So puzzling.