Codeflesh: The Definitive Edition

Superficially, Codeflesh is just another masked-crime-fighter saga. Bail bondsman Cameron Daltry's clients are either big as trucks or "gifted," so that when they skip their court dates, they require special attention (e.g., a scruffy teenager with telekinetic capability has to be knocked out and kept out to be taken in). Daltry retrieves his own no-shows but, having been court-ordered not to, dons a full-head mask with a bar code on the face for the nonce. Unfortunately, his bondsman days and bounty-hunter nights tick off his exotic-dancer girlfriend. The book bounces between pounding sessions with the baddies and fence mending with her. The whole thing resembles a string of TV cop-show episodes, but few TV shows' visuals are anywhere near as impressive as Adlard's artwork. Adlard has the high-contrast, deep-focus look of the best films noir down pat, now and then effectively steering the occasional panel, especially in fight scenes, toward almost "unreadable" abstraction. He draws the way Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy scenarios ought to look. Ray Olson
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