Comicon Advent Calendar Day 9: A ‘Scene Of The Crime’ Christmas Tale
by Richard Bruton
Welcome once more to the Comicon Advent Calendar, where we give you 24 days of advent comics – just like the regular advent calendar you had as a kid, just with less calories and more comics…
Today, we’re back to the halcyon days of Vertigo and their Winter’s Edge #2 collection from 1998. We’re looking at a Scene of the Crime Christmas mystery, in ‘Gods and Sinners’ courtesy of Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark, with colours from James Sinclair and letters from John Costanza.
Scene of the Crime was a damn fine, mostly forgotten, four-issue crime series from Brubaker, Lark, and later joined by Sean Phillips on inks. And it really is well worth your time tracking it down.
But don’t be coming to this one expecting something warm and cozy and sentimental. This one’s a few pages of downbeat, followed by a finale that’s just sad and brutal and nasty and as hopeless as Christmas time can feel sometimes. After all, not everyone gets the Christmas happy ending they deserve.
So, Jack Herriman, PI, is tracking down this guy called Dirk Emerson, material witness for a homicide…
Along with Knut, the incredibly talented crime scene photographer, and Molly, who runs Knut’s scene of the crime museum, they head off to Chicago and the cold and the snow. Molly gets family time, Jack gets freezing his ass off in a rental car staking out Emerson’s place, pee bottle and all.
Then the nosy kid shows up, Iris, way too world-wise, way too observant, made Jack as watching the neighbourhood straight off.
And then, just at the worst moment, Emerson shows up and things go badly south, all leading to an ending that just fills you with the inevitability and hopelessness of it all. Damn good for sure, but dark and cold and full of winter chill.
