Written and illustrated by Giannis Milonogiannis
In the tough futuristic setting of New Athens, Detective Solano is given a case to solve including cover-ups, murder and, of course, a fast paced chase sequence.
This graphic novel, which was originally released this time last year as four web-comics, is very hard to get into. It does take a good quarter of the book to get to grips with this futuristic city and the changes to the world in which our detective works. We’re meant to know all this background so when Solano goes into suspicion theory about a robot committed the murder you have to stop and think, what is this world?
Sadly there’s no time for catch-up, you have to go along for the ride and pick up what you can on the way. That being said, once I got into it after twenty or thirty pages, it really hooks itself into you, making you try and work out the mystery before Solano, which is always fun in any story.
The book does contain its fair share of twists and turns as well as a short bonus story at the back of the book, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry it’s own bag of faults.
One major fault with the story is that we don’t see anything but the case. There’s a nice scene where Solano gets talking to two guys and arranges to go out for a drink but we don’t see this or anything else in his personal life, making it very hard to distance him from your normal, everyday copper and make him something special. I never found a window into neither his life nor that of the city itself, which was displayed in the artwork but we’ve got a big futuristic city of Athens. When I read that I thought “how cool is that?” but sadly we don’t really investigate into the city. Sure we get scenery and see one of the market-type places but there’s nothing substantial to show off what this future is like to the audience.
My other fault with the story is that, whilst the artwork is brilliant, kept quite simple most of the time and given a manga-esque approach, the lettering isn’t the easiest to read in the world. The letters are crooked and squashed together in places making it difficult reading in places, which isn’t great by any means, let alone in a book where this reader is already struggling to find any sense of love for the title character.
What this story is, however, is fantastic material for a Hollywood movie, it feels as though it’s been written with a movie in mind. I don’t think the black and white effect of the book does the artwork justice, as putting colour into this ‘wonderful’ city would make it so much more mesmerising and eye-catching, which is just the sort of thing a blockbuster movie slot could give to the locations. There’s a fantastic chase scene in the story that, whilst reading, I couldn’t help but picture on the big screen.
For me, Old City Blues is a good story, packing a couple decent twists, but there’s not enough substance to it to make it a worthwhile read beyond the main story, making it scratch a five from ten for me. I wouldn’t necessarily say no to a sequel, but only if we see vast improvements made, especially in terms of characterisation.
