A review by tfitoby
Goldfish by Matt Wagner, Brian Michael Bendis

4.0

There's something positively David Mackian about the way Bendis assaults your eyes with his page layout in neo-noir in graphic novel form, Goldfish. As with Mack the real pleasure of the work lies not in the story or the characters or even the individual panels but in the way each panel is presented as part of a whole. Don't get me wrong, conman, trickster, hustler with a heart of gold protagonist David Gold AKA Goldfish is an interesting character and his quest to gain custody of his son from underworld queenpin and former girlfriend Lauren Bacall (true story that's her name) is the stuff that Thompson-esque dreams are made of but on its own it would fail to truly satisfy thanks to the very nature of graphic novels as a storytelling medium; the book would need to be double the length to really capture the depth of the story, the subtleties and nuances, in the same way a traditional novel would. It's good, but not great but still a must read for fans of the crime genre within the graphic novel world.