Deer Editor (2024)

May 20, 2024
Lindsay and Kivelä (the Everfrost series) deliver a taut, gritty noir studded with tough guys, suspicious dames, and hard-boiled dialogue delivered by a humanoid deer. “Sometimes you break a story, and well... sometimes the story breaks you,” says Bucky, a world-weary journalist who’s not afraid to put his body and soul on the line in service of The Truth—aka the big-city newspaper that signs his paycheck. A hot tip about a John Doe who died under mysterious circumstances brings Bucky to the city morgue. One thing leads to another as he and his faithful sub-editor, Dan, uncover a political conspiracy that goes all the way to the mayor’s office. Despite the unique physical characteristics and abilities that Bucky boasts—such as powerful antlers and the speed and strength to chase down and batter a car—none of the friends or foes he encounters comment on the fact that he’s the only animal who talks. That oddity, along with the shadowy, atmospheric artwork, makes for an entertaining hook—though the mystery that Bucky ultimately uncovers is fairly paint-by-numbers. But whatever the plot lacks in originality is made up for by the inventiveness of the dialogue (“Investigative journalism is getting out there and pounding sap from the trees,” says Bucky). This one’s for those who want to keep comics weird.

An investigative journalist and editor, who happens to look like a deer, becomes entangled in a shadowy local mystery in Lindsay's noir-tinged graphic novel. The story starts with human carjacker John Doe (the first of several deer-related puns) dying amid suspicious circumstances. The protagonist, an anthropomorphic deer named Bucky who has the personality of a 1950s movie detective, quickly learns that the dead man had connections to the mayor's press secretary, Rachel Meadows. After Bucky finds her murdered, he chases down a car that's fleeing the crime scene and rams his antlers through the window, but the perpetrators escape. The second chapter shifts focus to Bucky's human sub-editor, Dan, as he tries to infiltrate the corrupt mayor's inner circle. When he learns causes the story to take a detour into the supernatural, and Bucky reappears to help; the plot thickens in the following chapter. Throughout, the story captivates with its blend of hardboiled language and noir aesthetics, though it occasionally veers into clich�d territory. Women seem to exist in the story mainly to be killed, and readers may Bucky's inner monologues are ceaselessly edgy to a fault: "Most mouthbreathers on the street think calling us a hack is an insult. There's a reason hack is a homonym with what you do with a firm blade in a rough fashion." With his lethal antlers, Bucky bears a striking resemblance to the X-Men character Wolverine (even, at one point, calling someone "Bub"), and the story never explores the reasons why he's accepted as a deer in a world entirely populated by humans. Still, some of the overheated language and storytelling is saved by Kivel�'s striking two-tone artwork, which features cinematically staged fight sequences, menacing shadows, and the ever-present threat of Bucky's antlers. An often entertaining and offbeat, if occasionally overwrought, mystery tale.

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