Daytripping In Spooksville

Spooksville: The Bone Jangles Cases #1
Created & Illustrated by John C. Narcomey Jr.
Written by Justin Fox
Edited by Daryl Auclair
Published by Hightower
Reviewed by Richard Caldwell

In Spooksville: The Bone Jangles Cases, we meet Bone Jangles himself- a hard-drinking double-fisted private dick who just happens to be a walking, talking skeleton. Thrown cranium first into a case involving a murder attempt on an heir to a candy dynasty, Jangles is tough enough to take everything in stride no matter how many skulls he has to crack along the way.
The scenery of Spooksville is as much of a character, from the tasty barmaiden to the crazy design work employed by Narcomey throughout. Moreso, I think Spooksville is where every character from every Tom Waits song lives. In fact, there are quite a few Waits references scattered here and there, peppering up the place.
The plot is effective, introducing the major players and how they go about resolving the kinds of problems where family ties can strangle and where creative thinking is at times every bit as valid as outright gunplay.
The art is real fun on the eyes. This is a flirty, jazzy take on Dadaism, cartoony without being cartoonish. There is style to this, real style that shows in the unnatural angles of the settings and layouts and infuses the story with plenty of personality. The only thing that comes even remotely close to comparison is the Poppy Z Brite novel Drawing Blood, wherein a cartoonist creates another world out of nothing but straight jazz and comics. This is hepcat land. Not for kids mind you, even if the pictures are so pretty. A big chunk of the story takes place in a bar where the cleavage is as overflowing as the frosted mugs.
Bone Jangles is a solid character, noirish and still tongue in cheek (though without the actual tongue and/or cheek, of course). I look forward to many more stories of Jangles and his crazy crazy town.