CSI:
SERIAL
Max Allan Collins, Gabriel Rodriguez and Ashley Wood
IDW Publishing/Titan
Books
Not
content with having one successful series, the makers of ultramodern forensic
drama CSI:
Crime Scene Investigations decided to create a sister show, CSI:
Miami. This spin-off, which saw David Caruso playing the best Batman outside of
Gotham City, also did very well, after some initial cast problems, and after a
while, it was decided that a third series would be commissioned: CSI: New
York. This show was notable for being the one to take the number of fictional
policemen on the streets of the Big Apple past the number of actual
policemen. But that wasn’t enough.
The
makers of CSI decided that it might be fun to take the already popular formula
to an entirely new medium. And so it was that CSI: The Comic Book was created.
And
an entire world held its breath.
Well,
I may be embellishing things a little. But to be fair, I was a bit nervous when
I picked this book up. I’ve had bad experiences with licensed comics before,
you see. Often, the characters look either too little like their TV
counterparts, or they look like they’ve been traced from stock photographs,
and so convey very little character.
The
last good spin-off comic I read was the Red Dwarf Smegazine, which
combined adaptations of the TV shows with original short strips. While many of
the stories were…awful, many of them were fantastic, retaining the puckishness
of the TV show and the easy mutual abusiveness of the cast.
There
is a point to all this, by the way. The point is, I held out little hope that
Serial would live up to the standards of CSI, and as I opened the book to the
first page, I resigned myself to so much service station baguette
disappointment.
Which
just goes to show that I shouldn’t be a betting man.
CSI:
Serial follows the original Las Vegas cast (the bookish, detached Gil Grissom,
the intuitive and wry Catherine Willows, et al.) as they hunt a serial
killer who seeks to re-enact the world’s first and most famous such
crime. Unfortunately, this modern-day Jack has chosen to strike during the
biggest Ripper convention ever held. Fortunately for the victims, both potential
and post-mortem, Grissom and the team are not easily deceived…
It
is, perhaps, a little unfortunate that the first CSI comic should choose to
exploit the Ripper story in this way. After all, one of the most well respected
books in the modern history of Comics is Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s
Ripper novel From Hell (itself translated into a forensic fantasy film). Many
readers might find this furrow ploughed to death…so to speak.
But
the truth is that the similarities between Serial and From Hell end with the
reconstruction of Jack’s crimes. Serial is really more of a procedural novel
than From Hell, whose lyrical atrocities were as much about the forging of
history as they were about five murdered women. And, indeed, Serial ends up
being as much about the motive behind the crimes as it is the mechanics of
tracking the criminal.
Max
Allan Collins is a veteran author of detective fiction. He is also a
well-regarded writer of comics, whose Westernisation of the Lone Wolf comics,
Road to Perdition, was itself adapted for the big screen, to Oscar-winning
effect. This clearly made him the ideal choice for a book like Serial. His
dialogue is a little flowery in places, and his opening captions are a little
cheesy, but the voices of the real-life cast come through nicely, and the
exposition is kept to the minimum. Collins captures Grissom’s keen intellect
and his measured, calm, yet efficient approach to his work. Collins also does a
fine job with the much more accessible Catherine Willows, and the younger
members of the cast. The only criticism I have of the writing is that, in one
scene, Collins appears to have Grissom mixed up with The Shield’s Vic Mackey.
It
helps that the cast look exactly like they do on the telly. Gabriel
Rodriguez captures each cast member, from the avuncular Captain Brass to the
gosharootie charm of Nick Stokes. Again, it is the character of Catherine
Willows (played by Marg Helgenberger) who pops off the page from panel one. The
storytelling is crisp, and the characters get to emote with all the skill of the
real deal.
The
only major departure from the slavish aping of the TV show is in the sections
where the crimes are reconstructed. Where, on the show, each gunshot, stabbing
or overdose is brought to vivid forensic life through high-definition CGI and
modelwork, the comic takes a different approach. The popular comic painter
Ashley Wood produces each reconstruction, and with his trademarked ethereality,
concentrates on the emotional impact of the crime on the reader, rather than the
gritty detail of bullet trajectories, and so on. This experimental technique
works extremely well, and likely saves pages and pages of story.
While
Serial isn’t quite as good as the very best of CSI, it certainly stands
alongside the majority of episodes, which is a sure sign of the book’s
quality. It is, however, far and away the best licensed/spin-off comic in recent
memory, and a great little procedural in its own right. It stands alongside Kane
and Gotham
Central as one of the few really good cop comics, and even were I not
a massive fan of the TV show, I would still be hungry and eager for more, as
soon as I can get to the comic shop.
With
books starring both the Miami and New York teams on the shelves (or the
horizon), as well as comics based on The Shield and 24 available now, CSI:
Serial is at the vanguard of a new wave of adaptations that treat the license as
a privilege to be proved worthy of, instead of an excuse for shoddy comics. It
will almost certainly put the “graphic” back into “graphic novel.”
Case
closed.
Review Text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist