Color me noir : THE NOIR INFLUENCE IN COMIC BOOKS

by Bryon Quertermous

I wasn’t a normal kid. The evidence for this is, I’ve been told, is overwhelming, but for our purposes here the reason is that I didn’t read comic books. There was the occasional Disney comic book and my uncle gave me a couple of Superman comics but that’s as much as I can remember. One afternoon, when I was maybe 13 or 14, I realized this and sat down on my bed with a stack of comic books determined to act like a normal kid. I feel asleep instead. It wasn’t until later in college, when I developed a weird jones for superheroes, that I began revisiting comics.

By this time I was also steeped in the noir traditions. I had moved from Spenser and Elvis Cole back to Spade and Marlowe and Hammer. My love of TV and movie noir was also pretty well in place. This is when I noticed there was a substantial noir influence in many comic books series. By then they were known as graphic novels and the art was much darker than previous comics. The book widely credited with starting this trend is Frank Miller’s "The Dark Knight Returns" in 1986. Batman, as he was originally conceived, was not noir influenced, he WAS noir. After the golden age though, Batman was reduced to a corny joke through the sixties and seventies. Miller took Batman back to his vigilante roots. Using an aging Bruce Wayne allowed Miller to show actual wear and tear and a hero after years of fighting. This was a remarkable new concept in comics.

That same year, Alan Moore released the second pillar of the new wave comics with "Watchmen." This twelve book mini-series takes place in a universe where superheroes really exist and have been banned by Congress. The series as a whole has a very noir tone with a killer who was knocking off the old superheroes. Rorschach is a wise-cracking masked hero who dresses in a beat-up trench coat and fedora as he investigates the murders. Of course he also smokes and has a wonderfully sadistic way of interviewing bad guys.

After he kicked the camp out of Batman, Miller spread his special kind of love to Daredevil, again taking a campy superhero, beating him senseless with tragedy, and then letting him loose on the bad guys. But Miller’s biggest contribution to noir is the Sin City series. These stark black and white books use just a splash of color here and there but mainly content themselves with showing us the underbelly of the underbelly of Basin City and its most vile residents. A few of the highlight characters are Marv, the self-described ugliest man on the planet, who seeks revenge on the person who killed the only woman to ever love him; Hartigan, a crooked cop with a bad heart who views himself as the guardian angel of Nancy, a pretty stripper with anything but a heart of gold. There’s also Yellow Bastard, a rapist and murderer who looks a bit like a Ferengi from Star Trek dragged out of the toilet. A movie version of Sin City starring Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba and Mickey Rourke will be released in April and features digital backgrounds drawn directly from the graphic novels.

The other writer most responsible for the noir influence in comic books is Garth Ennis. He made his bones on a few B-level comic titles like Judge Dredd but in 1992 he created his own legacy with the four-year run of "Preacher." Jesse Custer is a Texas preacher who was possessed by a powerful demon called Genesis. Throughout the series, Jesse wanders the country trying to find God and using his powers for his own skewed brand of justice. Chasing after him is the Saint of Killers, a powerful killing machine sent from Heaven to kill Jesse and capture the demon inside him. Jesse is drawn straight from traditional noir mold (with all its inherent vices) and splashed with holy water. His sidekick is an Irish Vampire named Ken Bruen…I mean Cassidy.

Ennis’s other contributions to the noir cannon are the horror series "Hellblazer" and the action series "Hitman." John Constantine, the anti-hero of Hellblazer is a hard drinking, smoking, trenchcoat-clad demon chaser (just the kind of person to be played in the movies by Keanu Reeves right?). Constantine embodies many of the traditional noir flairs but literally has to face his own demons. "Hitman" is the story of Tommy Monaghan, an assassin with supernatural powers. While many of the "Hitman" stories run toward the hardboiled, the series also prides itself on going way over the top into ridiculous at times. Monaghan once faced off against a radioactive Santa Claus. "Hitman" is the natural outgrowth of Ennis’s work on another hardboiled assassin title, "The Punisher."

These are just a few of the many hardboiled and noir influenced comic books on the market. Max Allan Collins also dipped into the field with his "Road to Perdition" series and Greg Rucka began a new series called "Gotham Central" focusing on the homicide detectives in Gotham and how they co-exist with Batman. Anywhere you find well-developed characters with nasty vices, questionable but firm moral codes, and a healthy appetite for violence, the noir shadow isn’t far behind.

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Copyright © 2005 Bryon Quertermous

Read an extract from Bryon Quertermous's Lunchbox Hero

BRYON QUERTERMOUS has been an editor, journalist, teacher and playwright. His first play, a shameless rip-off of The Maltese Falcon, was produced by Buckham Alley Theatre in Flint, Michigan when he was 19 and his short stories have been published in DETECTIVE MYSTERY STORIES and THE WHITEWATER REVIEW. His first novel was shortlisted for the Crime Writer's Association Debut Dagger. He is currently in the creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University.