Domino Lady, Noir D.O.A.
Written and Illustrated by: Nancy Holder & Shawn van Brisen
Released by: Moonstone
Now this is an interesting concept for a comic. 1st Domino Lady is actually a character that dates back to the 1930’s. She was a socialite whose father was the DA and murdered. She dons the domino mask and a white backless dress to avenge him, armed with a syringe of knockout serum and a .45. In this new story, still set in the 1930’s they carry over pretty much all of the history, although I’m not sure about the father bit. This is a one off issue and it’s an interesting blend of a mostly written story and then a full-page illustration, although the story carries most of the work. I can’t really think of another series that has tried something similar.
Our story beings in a club, Domino is meeting Johnny “the Saint” Santangelo. The two are in love and are discussing making a life together, but Johnny is in the mob and his uncle is the godfather. And you don’t leave the mob. But Johnny assures Domino that his uncle will let him out. Johnny and Domino make their way out of the club, but suddenly he doubles over in pain clutching his stomach and passes out. Has he been poisoned? Domino gets him to the hospital and is told he has 24 hours to live unless she can figure out the type of poison. She heads back to the club to ask some questions and while there spots a member of the mob and follows him back to the godfather’s home. Here she overhears that Johnny two-timed another woman, but the waitress at the club was going to fix it. She confronts the waitress, find out what he’s been poisoned with and goes to save him…before the mob decides he needs to meet his end. Two-timing women and lying to the godfather don’t get you very far.
The artwork is…ok. I think in some places they go a bit overboard with the cross hatching, but the overall drawing style isn’t bad. Where it really fails for me is that the characters all seem to have the same emotion, even when they’re supposed to be frightened or upset they just look neutral. Or at most they raise their eyebrows a little bit. I think the story is less because the illustrations aren’t really carrying their weight and instead they just exist. I do have to say that I like the front cover, which appears to have been done by a different artist than the interior. It’s the only place in the issue where they’ve given it some color and they’ve made it appear scuffed up, almost as to make it look like it really is from the 1930’s.
The overall story isn’t bad and it’s easy enough to follow. But just like the artwork I was a bit disappointed by it. There were no exciting twists or turns, nothing really that left me on the edge of my seat wondering what was going to happen next. Mostly I just didn’t feel attached to the characters. It seems like we never really got to know them or invested in them, so it felt more like we were reading an article after the event telling us what happened, instead of reading a diary with intimate details.
Overall it was an ok issue. I think that it was an interesting concept to have the story written out and illustrations accompanying it, but in this case it just didn’t work well together. Perhaps in other issues the two work a bit better together, but not here. I would recommend it to fans of noir as something to check out as an interesting experiment.
