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Forms and shapes- a review of Area 10

By page 13 of Area 10, you get the idea that this book is not going to be the straight-up, cop procedural it is disguised as.  Detective Adam Kamen's hunt for a serial killer they call Henry the Eighth, because he cuts off his victims head, becomes something strange and surreal after Kamen's seemingly random encounter with a violent man in a doctor's office.  In a surreal and subtle sequence, Christos Gage and Chris Samnee create the key, memorable visual of the book.  It's early in the story but it is a key turning point, transforming a recognizable and basic police story into something else.

Gage's story is a quick, dirty tale.  Area 10 allows the Law and Order: SVU and Numb3rs writer to take a story about a cop and a serial killer and twist it, allowing him to include the supernatural into his story.  As Kamen chases the killer Henry the Eighth, he begins to see time differently after a serious head injury.  He begins to see things and know things about people that he couldn't possibly know; his doctor was a cheerleader in school, the old guy who has sold him his daily newspaper for years suddenly looks like a young kid, one of Henry's victim's mother momentarily becomes an old crone.  Is he just hallucinating or is he seeing things he shouldn't be seeing?  And, if he is hallucinating, is this the cop that you want on the trail of a deadly serial killer?

Area 10 is modern pulp, a quick page turner but ultimately the story is quite thin.  Gage just doesn't have the room he needs to for his story.  I can't help but think that if this were a long series like 100 Bullets or Hellblazer that Gage would have had the room to really build up this story and to make his characters real.  Unfortunately, this book moves too quickly, getting the characters to the points where they need to be without ever really establishing who they are. Kamen is interesting only as far as his injuries and pursuit of Henry takes him but Gage tries to build him up more than that.  A failed marriage and an out-of-left-field affair with his doctor never feel fully formed, particularly the doctor's relationship.  Those plot points are there in Gage's story but they never become the key points that they should.  They advance the plot but never become a firm part of the plot.

Like those relationships, the serial killer story just never feels as important to the reader as it does to Kamen.  The first third of the book has so much it needs to establish to make the latter parts of the book work that it rushes through everything.  Henry the Eighth should be a new Hannibal Lecter or John Doe (from Se7en) but instead of being a big, scary boogie man for Kamen to chase, Henry remains a faceless, featureless void for too long.  That lack of features even becomes a visual cue for the character that never quite works.  Gage is full of ideas for his characters and his plot but there's just not enough room in this book to give them all the space they need or deserve.

Chris Samnee is a fascinating artist to watch on this book.  He shows you just enough of what Gage's story needs you to see, no more and no less.  Samnee draws darkness and light, defining his world by the shadows.  It's a lovely, naturalistic way to draw, creating a world of shape and forms rather than by lines and boundaries.  His style here, much like in 2005's Capote in Kansas, invites the reader into the book, allowing the reader to complete the images and become more involved in the story.

Much in the same way, Samnee doesn't show us everything in the story, instead picking angles and images that suggest what's happening rather than making it obvious.  That early sequence I mentioned earlier, the one that much of the rest of the story hinges on, could have been shown any number of more literal and graphic ways but instead, most of the action is only hinted at as Samnee shows more of the results rather than what actually happened.  That style of storytelling makes the large moments so much larger and more important.  The way that Gage and Samnee structure what the reader sees creates the suspense of Area 10.

Area 10 is a book of shadows, of what we see and what remains unseen.  In both Gage's story and Samnee's artwork, the story remains in shadows, asking the reader to fill in gaps and questions.  While that works for the artwork, giving the reader a level of  investment into the book, the story asks the reader to accept too many things too quickly as it races to get to the end.

Area 10
Written by: Christos N. Gage
Drawn by: Chris Samnee
Lettered by: Clem Robins

Area 10 is available on Amazon.com.