Screening Crime: Black Monday Murders

I thought it would be fun to share a Book Report I did in 2017 for one of my modules while on my Media and Cultural Studies Undergrad.

Ok, I did manage to talk my lecturer round to letting me do a Graphic Novel because I'm dyslexic.

I should have read a bloody book like everyone else ... but I didn't. HA. Lucky me. I got an A+.

I'll let you decide if I deserved it (I didn't think so to be perfectly honest). I could have and should have submitted a second draft.

The Black Monday Murders is one of my favourite graphic novels, I love the artwork. I do recommend it... don't be too disappointed that it's left of a weird cliffhanger though. From what I can figure out Coker and Hickman are working on Volume 3.

Screening Crime: From Detectives to Serial Killers

Book Review

The Black Monday Murders

By Jonathan Hickman and Tomm Coker.

30-10-2017

The Black Monday Murders Vol 1: [All Hail, God Mammon] is a graphic novel written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Tomm Coker, it is part of a series rather than a stand-alone novel so this volume ends on a cliffhanger rather than a conclusion – there is an estimated two more volumes; with Volume 2 being released in January 2018. The novel opens on "Black Thursday" - the 24th of October 1929 in New York during the Wall Street crash. On this day in history, the American stock exchange fell dramatically by nearly a third which left many stockholders bankrupt due to the gambling culture of the decadent Twenties. Journalists at the time reported on eleven suicides at the Wall Street address that day – all of which were the result of jumping to their deaths from the windows of the building (Harman, 1999). The novel comments on this and suggests a larger conspiracy theory behind it which helps tie into the wider theme of the piece. The "redacted files" and interview transcripts which are scattered throughout the piece also add to the overall feeling of mystery, cover-up and the paranormal. Hickman introduces the reader to four families who own the fictional Caina Investment bank: The Rothschilds; the Bischoffs; The Dominics and the Ackermanns – who are shown as taking part in occult activities to maintain their control over wealth, power and influence. Their practices are inherited by their descendants along with control of the Caina business. Hickman moves the reader back to 2016 New York and introduces the Character of Inspector Theodore James Dumas who is called on to investigate the gruesome and ritualistic murder of Danial Rothchild, head chair of Caina Banking. Dumas is led into the shadowy world of capitalism, and occultism as Daniel's death has created an opportunity for a reshuffling of power within the families and their Russian sister investment bank Kankrin. This book review will try to examine how the character of Theodore Dumas works within the conventions of the hardboiled genre, unwrapping themes such as isolation, personal morality and social crime from within The Black Monday Murders. Notions of the superior man within Dumas' relationship with his eccentricities, logic and relationship with Caffey will also be looked at. Then it will move on to discuss themes of monsterization, violence and the femme fatale.

The Black Monday Murders is a crime fiction graphic novel with Lovecraftian qualities of horror and mystery carefully interwoven into the storyline. The costume design of Inspector Theodore Dumas seems to be largely influenced by the hardboiled detectives created between the Thirties and the Fifties, for example, Detective Dick Tracy created by cartoonist Chester Gould in 1931 (Encyclopædia Britannic, 2017) was the first comic strip detective to be shown wearing the iconic trench coat and fedora combination – this character was originally known as "plainclothes Tracy" (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2017). This ensemble became the established uniform for hardboiled Detectives such as Raymond Chandlers, and Phillip Marlowe – first published in 1939 (Nicol, 2012).

Hickman and Coker have chosen to decorate Dumas with these symbols to invoke a feeling of nostalgia, so the reader recognizes Dumas as the central figure within the novel - pulling the story which begins in the 1920s straight back into the present day. Qualities of the hardboiled Detective are also present within Inspector Dumas in the way he goes about his work as he moves from place to place in search of clues or evidence, Bran Nicol in his article "In the private eye: private space in the noir detective movie" describes hardboiled detectives as "the gumshoe" – which insinuates a talent for undercover work and quiet surveillance. He goes on to state that this movement from space to space is a unique trait of the hardboiled detective which stands in direct opposition to previous variations of sleuths, such as Sherlock Homes or C. Auguste Dupin who would conduct a large portion of their investigation in their homes (Nicol, 2012). Dumas within the book can be documented in four separate places; moving from the Police Precinct at the New York Police Department where his desk is allocated to the crime scene, then returning at night to investigate further; moving on to a University setting to seek clarification and to the Caina- Kankrin investment bank. Dumas' movements represent the search for answers and knowledge; movement also suggests a lack of personal attachments which can be argued as a type of hyper-masculinity that be found in hardboiled novels. The Private Investigator (P.I.) model is identified by his courage and resolve which are typically associated with ideas of masculinity – timidity and indecision assigned to the female victim position within the narrative (Knight, 2004). Stephen Knight states that Chandler believed the clue puzzle novels by Agatha Christie and such, to be too systematic and glossed over real-life relationships and complications, Chandler suggested that typically British crime fiction lacked reality and lived in a quaint bubble of the upper classes. This opinion of the formulaic British "who-done-it" novel being gentler and thus more feminine has been kept as binary opposition of the masculine and gritty hardboiled American style (Knight, 2004).

Hardboiled writers, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler popularized the idea of the detective as a lonely and isolated figure, who is unencumbered by the obligations associated with the ordinary married man which allows him to be a law unto himself, these authors do this by allowing their detective to have a voice and writing in first person from their point of view, much like a diary entry. Hickman reinforces this idea of isolation and loneliness within Dumas through the unorthodox keepsake of his Grandfather's finger bones (Hickman and Coker, 2016, pg 42). Remoteness from society is also produced through distinct no-nonsense "tough talk" - developing the character in this way allowed them to fully round out a sense of individuality, personal justice and morality unique to him, which is largely in shades of grey "… It is through this sense of isolation that the private-eye story is, in fact, the most innovative, bespeaking a sense that social values, communal more, have no real value" (Knight, 2004, pg 112). Dumas, unlike typically hardboiled detectives, does not use "tough talk" to assert his individuality, rather than a brooding cynical figure he is instead a curious eccentric who uses his intelligence to get to results - described as solving a few unsolvable cases.

His colleague, Detective Caffey is resentful of the preferential treatment Dumas gets because he is exceptional at his job; "His methods are… unorthodox to put it mildly, but, well he gets the job done. So we all look the other way…" (Hickman and Coker, 2016, pg 56) - Hailed as having a sort of sixth sense in crime-solving Dumas is allowed to work within him own rules. The Black Monday Murders is again similar to the hardboiled tradition in the sense that the brutality and ritualistic nature of the murder of Daniel Rothchild drives the storyline to a larger conspiracy rather than the killer, who is apprehended fairly early on in the book. Knight asserts that the Private Investigator cannot and will not drop a case either on command of another, but will peruse the trail until he is personally satisfied. "…the case in which he is employed is now over – usually about a quarter or a third of the way through the book. But he always decides to continue with his inquiries, to satisfy himself…" (Knight, 2004, pg 113).

Throughout the novel, Dumas can be quoted as continually correcting his colleagues and filling in the gaps of their investigations when they are otherwise 'clueless'. "For example, You're both New York Detectives working the fanatical district. Yet somehow, neither of you knows what the managing partner of the largest investment bank in the world looks like" (Hickman and Coker, 2016, pg 57). These traits are more akin to the traits found in the detective Sherlock Homes; Dumas's eccentricities are that he dresses in anachronistic clothing and keeps his grandfather's bones in his desk, as well as sharing a deductive and inductive style of investigation. Homes furthered the idea of science as a mode of investigation in 19th-century literature, Dumas can be described as the reflection of Homes in Post-Modernity where certainty is unreliable in an ambiguous society. Hickman also keeps to the trope of the superior man by giving Dumas a sidekick of sorts in Detective Caffey, unlike Watson to Homes, Caffey generally treats Dumas with disdain, annoyance and jealousy. The line where Sherlock Homes and Hardboiled Detectives seem to meet is at the solitary nature of the detective and the personal demons that haunt him which are acted out with the collections of addictions; Homes with his use of Opium and Hardboiled Detectives reliance on cigarettes and alcohol. Homes; born from the cultural disturbance from the Industrial Revolution and Detectives such as Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe from the ashes of disillusionment caused by the Great Depression, all had to battle the reinvention of evil caused by capitalism – just as Dumas has to with the Devilish Caina-Kankrin Investment Bank in 2016. Dumas also falls into another hardboiled writer's formula as he manages to create more confusion in his investigation than what he and his colleagues manage to solve, which suggests that there is more to reality or truth than meets the eye as he explores a secret language linked to the occult and big business.

Within The Black Monday Murders, four families have kept control over the Caina investment bank since the 1920s due to their connections to occultism, these families believe themselves better than those who work for them and refer to them as "slaves" (Hickman and Coker, 2016, pg 192) or "peasants" (Hickman and Coker, 2016, pg 216); Hickman uses this language to deliberately identify the same social problems which were both prevalent during the hardboiled era and the present day – Hammett in his work identified that crime was the result of social injustices and inequality brought on by rapid social change. Chandler and Hammett highlight the disenchantment of the American people with their society; coping with a sense of shrinking community, and disconnecting from other individuals. The American notion of manifest destiny during this time seemed further away from some citizens than others during the Great Depression. The four families in the Black Monday Murders and the occultism that surrounds them provide a metaphor for gangsterism and governmental and official corruption; all issues the hardboiled detective works through as will Inspector Dumas. "…the Hammett –Chandler detective seems related to the growing dismay with modern mercantile society ... in the post-war period, with its recurrent sense of lost dreams …" (Knight, 2004, pg 113). The illustration used in the Black Monday murders are reminiscent of the dark and smoggy city-scapes, with towering temples to big business and industry we have seen in film Noir, Elisabeth Bronfen (2011) states that film noir was used to show a new insidious unification between politics, crime and industry, and crime culture becomes a symbol of economic expansion.

The depiction of violence within the Black Monday Murders is used to emphasize cruelty and Inexplicable evil; the ritualistic nature of the killing is not only used to further the plot but calls attention to the binary of good and evil and serves to monsterise the Caina-Kankrin Bank and Capitalism on a whole. As the plot hinges on the idea of occultism the mosterisation is obvious and deliberate, each time the killer, Viktor Eresko is shown actively participating in violence the illustration changes to a tone of deep crimson as if a red light is shining which makes the colour of the blood which is spilt black – this only adds to the feeling that the killer is not human and does not contain a soul (Hickman and Coker, 2016). It can be argued that central figure Gregoria Rothchild, Danial Rothchilds twin sister is the femme fatale within the novel as she is a woman who comes into a position of power after years in exile due to her brother's success. After the Second World War, the women who were working in typically male-assigned jobs on the home front while the men were at war were encouraged to go back to a domestic role, some women were frustrated as they had become used to the independence. The femme fatale within the hardboiled novel, especially within film noir was the embodiment of the conflict and negotiation between men and women – the dualism of the female as both mother and whore within these stories was the reaction to the female empowerment in a world where men estranged; The Fatale is also the manifestation of the unification of crime and modernity, which fits the character of Gregoria as she is now the head of the corrupt Caina-Kankrin Investment bank.

The character of Gregoria has the characteristics of the femme fatale as she presents herself to be a confident person, who will do anything for her gain; Gregoria and her Lover also display the glamorous exterior of the Fatales of the Thirties - the showgirls and the flapper - "Of course, they gave us what we wanted. This time, we're getting everything we want…" (Hickman and Coker, 2016, pg 105), A large part of Gregoria's story is her relationship with her Lover Abby who is always by her side, this relationship can be interpreted from the hardboiled point of view as the femme Fatales transgressive personality and her desire for total autonomy through the rejection of the male body (Bronsfen, 2011).

References:

Bronfen, E. (2011) Crime Culture: Figuring Criminality in Fiction and Film. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Encyclopædia Britannic (2017) Chester Gould

AMERICAN CARTOONIST. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/bio... (Accessed: 16 October 2017).

Encyclopædia Britannica (2017) Dick Tracy. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/top... (Accessed: 16 October 2017).

Harman, C. (2008) A Peoples History of the World. London: Verso.

Hickman, J. and Coker, T. (2017) The Black Monday Murders [All Hail, God Mammon]. Portland: Image Comics Inc.

Knight, S. (2004) Crime Fiction, 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.

Nicol, B. (2012) Cross-Cultural Connections in Crime Fictions. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan Ltd.