Murder on the Airwaves

A Voice in the Dark #3

The beginning of Zoey Aarons’ college career has been busy. After getting away with murder and fending off constant temptation to kill again, she started her first call-in show at the university — and her first guest, who she feared was suicidal, actually murdered her parents live on the air. The police have exonerated her of any wrongdoing — she didn’t know the girl would kill her parents, and she’d been following police instructions at the time. And her boss at the radio station is protecting her anonymity, so she’ll be able to continue broadcasting her show. Life seems to be settling comfortably down, with a leisurely lunch with her roommates and a comforting visit with a psychotherapist. But her new hometown has a lot of dark secrets — it’s the serial killer capital of the world, for one thing — and Zoey’s urges to kill are just growing stronger as time passes.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nice story, slightly slower, but this is the beginning of a new storyarc. Lots of background on the college town Zoey lives in, along with more characterization for Zoey’s roommates and boss. Larime Taylor’s art is still just gorgeous. His characters look great and realistic — no cookie-cutter faces or Barbie-doll bodies. Zoey and her roommates are attractive, but not pin-ups. Her boss wears glasses that make her eyes look much larger. Her therapist is realistically paunchy. It’s refreshing to see comic art of people who look like actual people.

Velvet #3

Velvet is still on the run from the agency that thinks she killed their best agent. She has one ally, a former agent gone to seed. Not willing to simply go into hiding, she decides to retrace the late Jefferson Keller’s steps. She travels to Europe to infiltrate a society party and meet with one of his conquests, the wife of a Yugoslavian general. But the wife is missing, and she soon learns that her affair with Keller was found out, and she was shipped off to prison. Can Velvet get the woman out of the gulag and learn her story? Or should she expect complications?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Excellent espionage stuff, wonderful art, a nice twisty story, and lots of fun dialogue, action, and characterization. Ed Brubaker’s pretty good at this stuff, ain’t he?