Dioramas: a Love Story by Ricketts Brizuela
Published: May 11th, 2004
Publisher: Image Comics Genre: Graphic Novel/ Comic Series/ Crime Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Artwork
To be honest, the artwork is nothing special. It is black and white and quite standard...nothing particularly stands out. All the women's faces look the same and I found it hard at times to distinguish who was who. That being said, I ADORE the cover! I saw it and had to have it. Maybe I'm just strange, but an anatomical heart in color just does it for me and catches my eye! If only the contents lived up to the cover...
Plot Synopsis
How does serial killer Winfield Vickers express his love for Charlotte Rarnage? He creates elaborate, life-sized dioramas using real, dead human subjects. My Rating:
Highs: The cover. Some of the dialog. The sheer cheek of it.Pocket-Size Review
Lows: Totally ludicrous, totally confusing and completely unsatisfying.
Review
No. This one wasn't for me. Which I was very sad about because the cover was beautiful and promising but the contents just fell flat. Would you expect a graphic novel with a juicy, anatomical human heart throbbing on the cover to be dull? NEITHER DID I!
From what I could gather from the mixed-up, jumbled narrative, the main character is a young lady who used to be in the police force but isn't anymore. However, she still turns up at crime scenes...for some reason. And her boyfriend is still a high up member of the police. Who I found kinda creepy. She is also being stalked by a serial killer.
The serial killer is never, ever sinister. He is cuddly. I wasn't afraid of him even when he had a table full of dead bodies wearing party hats in his living room.Which is such a failing of a comic claiming to be 'a disturbing portrait of a serial killer'. I failed to be disturbed which is quite a feat for a book with the aims of this one (I get edgy very easily).
There is a twist. In fact, this story is practically the Corkscrew ride at Alton Towers; that's how many twists there are. The author clearly has a philosophy; when a story gets boring throw another twist in and that will spice things up. It didn't. It just really confused me. I didn't know who characters were half the time, where I was, who was talking to who, which story thread I was supposed to be following. There were no clear transitions between the sections so it just became a jumbled heap of dead bodies and policemen with worried expressions.
There really isn't anything else for me to say about this. It is just childish violence disguised as something more profound and exciting, and does absolutely nothing. Dull, but short enough to finish quickly so that was nice! And I don't regret buying it...the cover is too awesome. Maybe I should've framed it instead of read it.
Other Thoughts This Book has Inspired me to Read: It hasn't really. I would give other Crime graphic novels a go...can't judge a batch by one bad egg! Three Words to Describe this Book: Boring, Disappointing, Coverlust.
