Writers: Jesse Bausch, R.S. Paulette, and Joel Priddy
Artists: James Callahan, Justin Alicea, Patrick Godfrey, Shane McDermott, and Ian Sampson
Company: Oddgod Press

Taking a fresh look at an old idea is one of the surest ways to get my attention. Doing it with style and talent is almost guaranteed to do it. Jesse Bausch and James Callahan have more than gotten my attention- they’ve left me demanding more. Strange Detective Tales takes noir detective stories and old monster movies and mixes them in a way that makes me wish that these had been the movies I saw late night growing up. Where Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt mixed gangsters and demons in The Damned to excellent effect, Bausch and Callahan blend gumshoes and silver screen horrors to get a different, but just as delightful, result.

The first story arc, stretching across these three issues, follows Renfield and Vorlic, private investigators of the creep world, as they try to track down a missing person who just happens to be Renfield’s ex-girlfriend. Lots of creeps- zombies, vampires, trolls, gill-men, basically anything non-human- headed to Hollywood in the Thirties to try to make it big in horror flicks. Most just crashed and burned, and now the towns full of creeps who can’t afford to leave and struggle to get by. When they need a detective, they call Renfield and Vorlic. Renfield’s a bug-eating vampire, used to work for a famous bloodsucker. Vorlic’s a slightly hump-backed experimenter who trained under every mad scientist around. Just don’t call him Igor, he hates that.

The number of cool ideas packed into these pages is really amazing, from compelling characters like the ghost of Constance Vernon, silent film star who takes care of creeps in need, to the Little Green Mafia, the aliens of Roswell who took over organized crime in Hollywood. Both Renfield and Vorlic are well-developed, three-dimensional characters, and their relationship and interactions are great to read, There’s plenty of humor in the books too, as Bausch tosses in one-liners and Callahan little visual jokes that made me laugh out loud several times. Even the back-up stories were good reads and added to the experience.

Callahan is an extremely talented artist, with dynamic layout skills and a style that just feels like it belongs in an old black and white film. His ability to make even the weirdest-looking creep show emotion and action clearly is amazing, and his use of shadows and meticulous attention to detailed linework really deliver the effect that the story calls for. Everything looks slightly creepy, even when people are just sitting at a desk, and that keeps the reader in the perfect reading mood. Callahan has also done a graphic novel on his own, called Rotting in Dirtville, and it’s well worth checking out. You can see Randy’s review of it here.

Overall, this is a great find for me and I’ll be anxiously awaiting more from Bausch and Callahan. I’m not sure how long that will take, as it took only a few months for the first two issues to come out and two years for the third, but when there is more, I’ll be waiting.

This is an advance review. The first two issues are available, but issue 3 was solicited in November’s Previews.