Graphic Novel Review: TURF by Jonathan Ross & Tommy Lee Edwards

One thing's for sure, Jonathan Ross hit the nail on the hit when he said the premise of Turf - Gangsters v Aliens v Vampires - sounded like a child suffering from ADD. The comic book, released under the Image banner and now available to buy in its first graphic novel binding (I say "first" due to that gloriously silly cliff hanger/prologue at the end) is a cocktail of noir, pulp and sci-fi elements to end all genre cocktails. At its most successful, the series injected some much needed innovation into three generic settings that badly needed it thanks to being done close to death. Indeed within those three individual strands, the innovation isn't all that obvious, it is only when they are meshed together that they are inflated with new life. The story focuses on ice-cold mob-boss Eddie Falco, who has enough heart to convince as our human protagonist (though for a while it seems like Ross decided instead to make the heart of the story his gutsy female journalist, before rejecting the idea mid-comic) and enough toughs to convince as a worthy her0. Falco is running his racket in Prohibition Era New York without too much unnecessary trouble until the Dragonmir start wiping out rival families and taking the "turf" for themselves - Falco is understandably upset so sets out to put an end to the new pretenders, only to discover what the reader already knows: that they and their followers are vampires. So that's one genre-marriage sorted; the other arrives courtesy of arms running alien Squeed, who crash-lands into the middle of the turf war and lends his considerable armoury and influence to Falco. The temptation to always refer to Turf as "Jonathan Ross' Turf" has overcome better commenters than myself, but I refuse on the grounds that such a reference undervalues, and undermines the influence of Tommy Lee Edwards, the other talent involved in the genre-marrying comic book series. And at the final evaluation it is Edwards who comes out shining the brightest next to some good though not incredible writing from new-comer Ross. Turf is a good idea, that much is certain, and the amalgamation of so many pulpy reference points definitely has a feeling of nerdvana about it, but it's all a little busy, and there is an inherent lack of restraint that means the plot bundles along too swiftly and without enough focus on certain elements to make you really care. And that's a crucial point, because in a world governed by vampires, aliens and stereotypical, occasionally one-dimensional caricatures of gangsters, molls and toughs, if you aren't encouraged to care about the characters in a conventional manner, it sticks out even more than in more conventional work. It isn't a deal-breaker, no matter how over-paced it gets by the end, but again it's an issue of self-discipline and restraint - something that Ross teased us to expect way back in April last year in an interview with ComicsAlliance:

I want to put so much in there €“ too many in there. We could have done ten books with this and it probably would have felt more paced than a lot of comic books. You read a lot of them where nothing happens. I don't like that.

There is definitely better to come from Ross - he possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of the comic universe, and a passion that will see him committed to putting out more stories in the company of some of the strongest artistic talents currently working. This time out, it's simply a matter of the slightly over-enthusiastic debutant, his skills not yet fully honed, trying to impress but still learning along the way, by his own admission. But to put it in its correct context, for a debut collection of work, Turf is incredibly well executed, and there is a great deal of promise in Ross' writing to suggest that he can do even better.

If I had one more criticism, it would be that the Squeed-based third of the story feels particularly underdone in comparison to the other two - the alien's introduction feels very rushed, at the cost of an intriguing back story that would have added substance, and the unfortunate overall result is that you can imagine the story still being exactly as successful without his presence at all.

Edwards' style is wonderfully contradicting - it is fluid and kinetic, implying movement in every stroke, and yet there is a very tight precision to his drawings, and a commitment to detail that isn't immediately obvious in all of them. With Edwards you really get the sense that every mark matters, and what he has achieved here is yet another impressive notch on the artist's belt. Overall, it's a very good graphic: the artwork is definitely better than the writing, but we have to remember at this stage that Jonathan Ross is a fledgling comic book talent - and in that context what he has managed here is more than a little impressive. While it feels a little like a cleverer Grindhouse style genre work, with an even more b-movie focus, the achievement of bringing innovation to three genres that could well be accused of being tired is another to be praised loudly. The first Turf graphic novel is available to buy now.