A review by crookedtreehouse
The Black Monday Murders, Volume 1 by Jonathan Hickman
3.0
I'm a massive fan of Jonathan Hickman. While many comic book writers introduce you to some characters in peril, and then you watch them get out of it, Hickman is more likely to throw a wall of text and symbols at you, weave a plot that you need an outline to understand, hands you said outline, and then presumes you will follow the story to its end. When it works: The Nightly News, The Fantastic Four, The Avengers/New Avengers, Transhuman, and East Of West (so far), it's some of the best comicing you can hope for. And when he misses the mark: God Is Dead, Red Mass From Mars, and The Manhattan Projects, it's usually at least interesting for a while.
For me, it's too early to tell whether or not this is going to be any good. It's a super-convoluted story about the generations of families who run Wall Street through magic and sacrifice. There are family trees and time lines to help you follow how people are related to each other and their station in the magical hierarchy. At times, it doesn't feel like enough. But some times it feels like it doesn't matter.
At it's heart, this is your story of corporate greed and backstabbing amped up to 37 out of 10. It's culty. It's dire. And its art is gritty, which is a word I usually only use to describe terrible '90s DC comics, but here it works. It doesn't look like any other Hickman book, despite its similar iconography.
I'd recommend this for someone looking for a dense comic that you have to read and reread to fully appreciate. I just can't promise it will pay off in the end. But I felt that way about Hickman's Fantastic Four run, and was happy to discover that everything wrapped up neatly and satisfactorily.
For me, it's too early to tell whether or not this is going to be any good. It's a super-convoluted story about the generations of families who run Wall Street through magic and sacrifice. There are family trees and time lines to help you follow how people are related to each other and their station in the magical hierarchy. At times, it doesn't feel like enough. But some times it feels like it doesn't matter.
At it's heart, this is your story of corporate greed and backstabbing amped up to 37 out of 10. It's culty. It's dire. And its art is gritty, which is a word I usually only use to describe terrible '90s DC comics, but here it works. It doesn't look like any other Hickman book, despite its similar iconography.
I'd recommend this for someone looking for a dense comic that you have to read and reread to fully appreciate. I just can't promise it will pay off in the end. But I felt that way about Hickman's Fantastic Four run, and was happy to discover that everything wrapped up neatly and satisfactorily.