Felony Comics #1

Various Artists, Negative Pleasure, Brooklyn (New York), May 2014, 32 pages, full color, $ 6.

Four paranoid crime stories in full-color, a cover by the excellent Benjamin Marra and a back cover with a single-page strip by Karissa Sakumoto. This is Felony Comics, the new comic book published by Harris Smith's Negative Pleasure, of Jeans anthology fame. A lysergic and manic version of Mickey Mouse is the star performer of the colorful Crime Chime Noir by Alex Degen, a short story in the psychedelic cartoon genre. Lale Westvind in Slippery Seats shows a fetishist car seats thief in a world ruled by blue-skinned policemen: the absurd turns into logical and Westvind's intense line completes this amazing work. Pete Toms has a clean style, almost ligne claire: The Disguise Inside is a spy story worthy of the Nikita tv-series, emphasizing the paranoid element of the book. Benjamin Urkowitz's The Facts is still cartoon style, revised with an underground feeling, and it shows with sense of humor the adventures of a "good" detective. Felony Comics depicts with smug sarcasm a world where everyone is monitored, there is a thin border line between crime and justice, the authority figures lack credibility and transgression has an unavoidable appeal. This is a solid and coherent anthology, with four comics able to mix brilliant plots, pop art and visionary features: a must read.