Savage Town

BOOKLIST -- Image Comics' original graphic novel is dedicated to Steve Dillon, and, indeed, it captures an echo of the late British artist's collaborations with writer Garth Ennis on various crime sagas. Here working-class family man Jimmy Savage is navigating his way around the Hogans and the Dawsons, the two leading crime families of Limerick, Ireland. Jimmy is small time but has big ideas and is bucking for the top, and through various vicious schemes and betrayals, he appears to be on his way. The story offers a blue-collar social realism that paints an authentic sense of place and a believable portrait of Jimmy and his crowd, whose dialogue comes in a torrent of regional slang, which sometimes requires careful parsing. Jimmy, meanwhile, is by no means a sweetheart, as his bloody response to his oldest friend's betrayal attests. The art, though, softens the lines of its figures and uses the thick-jawed faces and occasional black-dots-for-eyes style reminiscent of old-time comic strips, effectively blunting the edges of the grim brutality with a cushion of visual innocence.