DEER EDITOR

An investigative journalist and editor, who happens to look like a deer, becomes entangled in a shadowy local mystery in Lindsay’s noir-tinged graphic novel.

The story starts with human carjacker John Doe (the first of several deer-related puns) dying amid suspicious circumstances. The protagonist, an anthropomorphic deer named Bucky who has the personality of a 1950s movie detective, quickly learns that the dead man had connections to the mayor’s press secretary, Rachel Meadows. After Bucky finds her murdered, he chases down a car that’s fleeing the crime scene and rams his antlers through the window, but the perpetrators escape. The second chapter shifts focus to Bucky’s human sub-editor, Dan, as he tries to infiltrate the corrupt mayor’s inner circle. When he learns causes the story to take a detour into the supernatural, and Bucky reappears to help; the plot thickens in the following chapter. Throughout, the story captivates with its blend of hardboiled language and noir aesthetics, though it occasionally veers into clichéd territory. Women seem to exist in the story mainly to be killed, and readers may Bucky’s inner monologues are ceaselessly edgy to a fault: “Most mouthbreathers on the street think calling us a hack is an insult. There’s a reason hack is a homonym with what you do with a firm blade in a rough fashion.” With his lethal antlers, Bucky bears a striking resemblance to the X-Men character Wolverine (even, at one point, calling someone “Bub”), and the story never explores the reasons why he’s accepted as a deer in a world entirely populated by humans. Still, some of the overheated language and storytelling is saved by Kivelä’s striking two-tone artwork, which features cinematically staged fight sequences, menacing shadows, and the ever-present threat of Bucky’s antlers.

An often entertaining and offbeat, if occasionally overwrought, mystery tale.