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Las Vegas is being terrorised by a copycat killer who is recreating
the murders of the legendary Jack the Ripper. His victims
are ritualistically murdered then butchered and, like the
Victorian archetype, he evades the best efforts of the police
to catch him. It's left to Gil Grissom and his CSI team to
stop the killer and bring this savage history lesson to an
end...
Serial
is
hardly an original premise: take the murders committed by
Jack the Ripper and bring them into the 21st Century. And,
of all the various attempts to bring this story to a graphic
novel, only Batman's Gotham by Gaslight managed to
achieve any critical success.
Having
said that, can you think of any other way to turn a successful
TV series into a mini-series collection of comic books, and
keep the reader interested over five issues? Not an easy task.
And for that reason alone Max Allan Collins deserves to be
congratulated.
But,
before you think of purchasing this collection, you need to
ask who it is aimed at. The dialogue and characteristics of
each character don't really match up with the screen characters.
And, a worse crime, is that the illustrations of the characters
are appalling in places. When you are publishing a graphic
novel based on a movie or TV show, you have two choices. You
can bring in an illustrator that will be able to reproduce
a perfect likeness of the characters, or you can bring in
someone who offers their own interpretation of the characters.
Sadly, Gabriel Rodriguez's work looks like he is copying from
poor photos. In fact he seems to only have a limited number
of photos to work from, as he tends to repeat the same angles
of characters time and time again. This looks shoddy.
There
is also the question of credibility. The characters jump to
too many conclusions without a proper explanation for the
reader and this makes the whole project seem rushed.
Even
serious CSI fans will probably feel that the release
of this collection is a serious crime.
Nick
Smithson
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