Comics Book Resources highly recommends Ricker Geary’s latest Axe-Man of New Orleans and provides a number of pages previews.
“AXE-MAN is proof of Geary’s obvious talent for resurrecting cold cases and presenting them in an easy to read package. With each page the reader is absorbed further and further into a tragic scene long gone but never forgotten, giving the entire book the feel of a scary story told around a crackling campfire.”
“His artwork doesn’t waste time. It’s not airy and light, but strict and a bit ominous. Geary doesn’t use shades of gray in this black-and-white comic the same way Eddie Campbell did in his collaboration with Alan Moore on From Hell; his use of light and shadow is consistently stark. Even the plain faces of the subjects he’s documenting with his illustrations have the spooky quality of old-world daguerreotypes.
My favorite book in the English language is Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, and one of my favorite films is David Fincher’s Zodiac. The horrors of reality are infinitely more frightening than the horrors of the human imagination, and I have great respect for writers and artists who can effectively capture such tales. Rick Geary has successfully done so in The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans. This is the first of his true-crime comic books that I’ve read, but I certainly hope it’s not my last.
What can I say? I’m a sucker for a good crime yarn, and Geary delivers.”
