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Carver: A Paris Story (Trade Paperback)

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    Ian Jane
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  • Carver: A Paris Story (Trade Paperback)



    Carver: A Paris Story (Trade Paperback)
    Released by: Z2 Comics
    Released on: September 20th, 2016.
    Written & Illustrated by: Chris Hunt
    Purchase From Amazon

    Chris Hunt's Carver: A Paris story starts off with a page in which we 'zoom' towards the face of a masked man named Stacker Lee, the 'bad mother' holding 'us' here against our will. In order for us to understand the circumstances we're being introduced to, however, there's some explaining that needs to be done. But in order to explain, he needs us to shut the fuck up. The PDF sent for review puts a black mark over the word fuck for some reason, but here at R!S!P!? We're allowed to say fuck if we want to. See? FUCK! Oddly enough, the F-word is blacked out throughout the entire run of this storyline, save for one instance where it was either left alone for dramatic effect or simply missed. Which is odd, as other curse words are used throughout. But I digress. Let's not miss the forest for the trees here.

    EDIT - Hunt left the one uncensored f-bomb in there as a tribute to Nick Cave's Stagger Lee, so all is forgiven!!

    With that out of the way, we cut to Paris. A man with a moustache stands nude on his balcony, surveying the city at night. He hears a rustle behind him, it's the woman we assume he's just made sweet love to. She hands him a smoke and asks this American man his name - of course, it's Carver. That's the title of the comic after all and he is clearly the hero. When she asks him where he got all of those scars from he tells her 'from women who asked too many questions.'

    It turns out he's in Paris to help someone he knew a long time ago but when she starts asking questions he pays her and she leaves. Carver likes French hookers with Louise Brooks haircuts and you can't fault him for that. Meanwhile, some French thugs seem to be only too aware that Carver has arrived in Paris. Their boss, Stacker, wants them to deal with him. Make him bleed a bit. When Carver strolls nonchalantly under a bridge, they make their move - bad idea. Carver is faster, deadlier and he's armed. He leaves one of them alive long enough to hear that Stacker wants to talk to him about someone named Catherine.

    And then that hooker with the Louise Brooks haircut, the foxy one from before? She shows up in the lair of that masked man, the one who started all of this by telling us to shut the fuck up so he could explain the rules to us. “Sometimes you gotta become a bad man, to do something good…”

    Outside a Parisian tavern a bearded man lights his cigarette. He's approached by a smaller, fancier man who asks to join him. His name is Scott, he's a writer and he asks the man with the beard if the person he's with would happen to be Francis Carver. The man pretends he doesn't know what Scott is talking about but Scott sees through him and eventually finds out that, yes, that is Carver. Scott wants to shake Carver's hand - he's a hero. But the bearded man isn't having any of it. He knows Scott sees Carver as a newspaper clipping, not a real person. He and Carver are killers and it's not something either man wants to be congratulated for.

    Smokes swirls up from the lit end of a woman's cigarette. The woman's name is Catie and she doesn't quite recognize the man standing in front of her as Francis Carver. She's genuinely shocked when he tells her who he is, her eyes well up with tears and he responds in kind. They've clearly missed one another a great deal, and she wants to know what happened to him.

    We flashback to Carver's time in the service, hiding in the woods from the enemy German forces, how he took on three of them, each armed with a rifle, using only his knife.

    When he snaps back to reality, he and Catie talk some more and then the truth about how and why he's ended up in this very place at this very time comes to light… and then a bar fight breaks out only to be stopped by a strange old man who basically tells him this fight is a job interview. A swig of whiskey, a few bullets and some knife slashings later and Carver has passed the interview, though he's upset that Catie saw him doing what he did, only to find out the truth about her missing daughter. They're jumped. When she gets hurt, he runs out into the street looking for help to be whisked away in a car driven by a woman who he recognizes. He calls her a whore, but apologizes once he realizes she has nursing training. She agrees to take care of Catie and then sends Carver downstairs. There's someone who wants to talk to him down there, someone wearing a hood and singing a song about a bad mother fucked named Stack-O-Lee…and then the bearded old man from the café shows up. He wants to give Carver a job, one that he has no choice to accept. Or so it seems. Carver, the woman from the car and the man in the hood just so happen to have a lot of guns and they don't intend to just walk away from Catie without putting up one Hell of a fight.




    Hunt does a fantastic job of building off of what he laid down in the earlier issues as we build towards the story's big finish. We get to know a bit more about our lead character here, not just about his background in the military and his skills with a blade but about his personal life. We don't know initially exactly what caused the rift that clearly broke off his relationship with Catie but we can clearly tell from the tears in their eyes that they do still care about one another very much and by the time we get to the last page, damn… that's love. Maybe the scarred, hooker banging killing machine of the first issue has more of a heart than we thought, even if he doesn't know it until life smacks him in the head with reality and with responsibility. The character development here is subtle, but meaningful, and Hunt's writing style is strong. He has a knack for tough talk, the dialogue here is fun to read and would seem to accurately reflect the types of characters he is writing, but at the same time it never feels like too much or goes too far into kitsch territory as to take us out of the story.

    And then there's the artwork. A self described 'protégé' of Paul Pope, Chris Hunt writes and illustrates Carver: A Paris Story with an infectious mix of humor and style. This is a slick looking book, the black and white artwork frequently uses a heavy line similar to the style Pope would employ in some of his own work, but while that influence is undeniable (even advertised) Hunt's got his own style. We know from the opening page when Stacker brings us closer and cusses us out before laying down his own law that this is going to be done with tongue placed firmly in cheek - and the humor here is pretty damn effective. The art works great alongside the script. It's atmospheric and at times even pretty, but when it comes time for the action scenes no punches are pulled. There's a definite sense of balance throughout this inaugural issue that makes it a kick to read. This is pulp style storytelling done right, a modern sensibility infusing a quirky take on a classic style. The black and white illustrations, heavy with ink, has nice detail and style to spare. The page where Catie is introduced is a perfect example - it's simple in that it really is nothing more than the trail of her cigarette's smoke, but the way that it's laid out draws our eyes from the top of the page to the bottom and then to the next page really nicely, to the point where this simple dramatic entrance is even legitimately suspenseful. The layouts here are unconventional but frequently beautiful, a nice balance of detail and noirish shadows that really does a damn good job of pulling us right in and leaving us wanting more. And thankfully there will be more, according to the last page of this collected edition. Which is great, because while this storyline is tied up quite nicely, there's a lot more that Hunt could do with the character and if he does it half as well as he did with A Paris Story, there's every reason to come back.

    Paul Pope himself contributes a pretty rad little preface story here, one that takes us back to Paris of '23 where Carver is in town looking for 'The Black Pearl Of Paris.' He saw her dance once back in New York. He meets a bearded man on a roof top, enjoys a Turkish cigarette and then comes to the conclusion that 'a thing needs doing.' This was presented as a backup story in the first issue but is inserted in this TPB edition before the main story. After A Paris Story proper finishes up, we get a fun little backup story called Vas A Morir by A. Ziritt and Hunt where Carver takes on a luchadore and a witch. There's also a great cover gallery that shows off work by Hunt, Pope and Ziritt.





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