The art is a wreck. I can’t believe anyone looked at the pages for the first issue and the ones for this issue and thought they were acceptable.

On the plus, Remender is less awful. He’s still writing a movie pitch for Mickey Rourke, right down to an intricate heist sequence, but at least he’s stopped with the terrible dialogue. He does do the James Bond villain scene, where the bad guy would get away if he didn’t reveal his master plan.

It’s hard to be disinterested, since the shoddy artwork has my bile rising. It’s so unfinished, I can’t believe Tocchini would even want his name on it.

The ending is somewhat successful too. I can see it working in the movie, for example, though I don’t know who they’re going to cast opposite Mickey Rourke. The female character, just because Remender’s writing is so lame, is rather complex.

Wow.

Tocchini’s art takes a major dive this issue. Most of it looks like he had some sketches and they colored them and called them good. It’s so bad I forgot the beginning of the issue actually looked good.

I don’t think I’ve read Remender before. Going to take a lot to convince me to read him again. This issue is awful on three fronts.

First, Remender uses racial ephitats to shock the reader. It’s a really cheap device and suggests he thinks he’s the Quentin Tarantino of comics but doesn’t understand Tarantino.

Second, the dialogue’s affected–more wannabe Tarantino–to the point it’s unintelligible. There’s no point in figuring out what it means.

Third, unlike Tarantino, Remender likes to make everyone a killing machine. It’s cheap and comes off as absurd and unrealistic in a book absurdly trying for realism. Or Remender’s brand of it.

Mickey Rourke will not be impressed.

Since I already knew I’d like the Greg Tocchini artwork–I hope the future issues have some more color; this issue is mostly set in dark streets and the brighter stuff is just so lush, I want more of it–The Last Days of American Crime otherwise mostly just showcased the benefits to the sixty-four page format.

Now, I’m not an advocate of it, don’t get me wrong, but if this comic had been a limited series of regular length, each issue would have been a constant frustration. With sixty-four pages, Remember pretty much gets a solid installment done. He achieves a full three act narrative, something most regular-sized comics don’t bother doing anymore.

Whether it’s a good three act narrative is something else.

It’s decent, definitely readable.

I’m holding off judgment for now.

It reads like they’re trying to sell it as a movie to Mickey Rourke; I like Mickey Rourke.