The Gun’s The Thing: The Black Beetle #1 Review

I’ve always believed that the difference between a superhero comic book and a pulp hero story is a gun, and the willingness to use it for its intended purpose. Sure, they have costumes and gadgets and secret headquarters in common, but in the end, the gun’s the thing. Batman has a batarang, The Shadow has a gun. Iron Man has repulsor rays, The Spider has a gun. Everything else is just setting, antagonist and motivation.

If you accept that fine, bright line – and there’s no reason you necessarily should, since my own acceptance of it varies depending on what I’m reading and how much whiskey was involved beforehand – then writer / artist Francesco Francavilla’s The Black Beetle, despite having the word “pulp” on the cover, is very much a superhero comic. The hero has a Beetlemobile, a gyrocopter backpack, and a secret headquarters… but he also defines himself as not being a killer, and he uses tranquilizer darts instead of bullets.

But he has a gun. Two of them, actually. Sweet-looking Colt M1911s that he wields and shoots two handed, like, well, The Shadow. So while this doesn’t technically meet my definition of “pulp,” it’s close enough. And it is one hell of a lot of fun… if a little light on some of the details.

We jump right in with The Black Beetle, surveilling a meeting between two of the biggest crime families in Colt City and preparing to jump in and kick a little ass when some inconsiderate soul blows the building sky high. Beetle manages to escape – with a couple of broken ribs – and, after a few visits to local watering  holes for a little friendly “conversation” (by which I mean “savage beatings”), he learns that one member of one of the families wasn’t at the meeting, and has gone into hiding… by way of turning himself in to the cops to be taken to a nice, cozy maximum security prison. When Beetle pays him a visit, he finds one terrified camper… and for good reason, because the nice young man who blew up the building is there to put two in his brainpan, and is doing his damndest to leave Beetle holding the bag.

For a change, I’m gonna address the art sooner rather than later, because it is the best part of this book. Francavilla has, justifiably, built a reputation of doing killer pulp-style illustrations (the guy won a Eisner for cover work last year, for Christ’s sake), and that style is all over this book. There are pages in this book that could easily act as cover art for an old Street & Smith magazine, and yet they still advance the story. Francavilla works in a medium line with simple. almost minimalistic facial expressions and figures. but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any detail here; almost every page is packed with little bits of business and establishing bits of business, like the Egyptian artifacts scattered around Beetle’s headquarters that intimate where Beetle got his imagery inspiration from, to the description of the tranquilizer he uses in his darts. Francavilla uses interesting panel layouts, including some Art Deco patterns in some page designs to act as panel borders. The whole thing screams pulp… and it’s interesting, because some of his panel layout are decidedly non-standard, yet I can’t imagine even non comic readers having a problem decoding it. It is simply a beautiful, well-produced set of comic / pulp art.

And that’s a good thing, because the story here is, well, sparse. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like it’s incomplete or loaded with plot holes or anything, but we’re dropped into things with very little explanation. Like: we have no explanation whatsoever as to who Black Beetle even is. We never even see the guy’s face, let along learn any of his motivations for fighting crime, or the means for his extensive array of Batman-style gadgets. And on one hand, this makes things a little bit confusing. But on the other, I keep thinking about every superhero movie I’ve ever watched where I’ve had to spend an hour waiting around through an extended origin story, being bored out of my tits waiting for something to finally fucking happen. So does it really matter who Black Beetle is and why he’s doing what he’s doing, beyond the obvious Egyptian / Scarab fetish? Well, on an infinite timeline, yeah, but for now, it’s a bit refreshing to just jump the hell in.

And by jumping in, Francavilla is able to deliver action from right out of the gate. Like any good pulp story, the action – and the guns – are the thing, and this issue delivers plenty of it. Hell, the things starts off with a guy on a roof blasting people with twin guns, includes an old-fashioned bar beating for information, and ends with a jailbreak. That’s a lot of action for 22 pages; it starts early on and it doesn’t let up. If nothing else, you get your money’s worth in this issue. And the period setting helps make everything come together; it isn’t vital for a story about this kind of adventurer, but the 1930s setting gives everything all the old-school pulp feel you could possibly want.

We could have an argument about whether The Black Beetle #1 is a pulp story or a superhero comic… and I am more than willing to have that discussion if you’re buying the beers. But either way, it has all the trappings and the feel of one of those classic stories, and is damn near required reading if you in any way like the old pulps. And it is fucking beautiful, even if you don’t. This is fun stuff that drops you right into the action, and if you don’t mind waiting to find out exactly why the action’s happening, you should give it a shot.