The Stop Button

What a cool crime comic.

It’s hard to identify who’s responsible for the plot—the book has two story credits and one script credit—but it’s definitely peculiar. The narrator of Blue Estate is a two-bit private investigator. But he’s not a Bogart-type, he’s an overweight TV and action movie geek whose dad runs the police’s major crimes division. So he knows the lingo, knows what’s going on, just doesn’t seem (this issue’s impression suggests) to know what to do about it.

His “case” involves the Russian mob, a closest gay action star (who looks a lot like Steven Seagal) and corrupt cops.

Scriptwriter Andrew Osborne does a great job with the narration; it’s the private investigator standard, but made far more interesting by the speaker not being the standard.

The narrator would be comical, but Osborne and the artists don’t ever let Blue Estate become a joke.

CREDITS

The Rachel Situation; writers, Viktor Kalvachev, Andrew Osborne and Kosta Yanev; artists, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, Kalvachev, Paul Maybury and Robert Valley; colorist, Kalvachev; editor, Philo Northrup; publisher, Image Comics.