‘First Degree: A Crime Anthology’ (review)

Written by David F. Walker and Various
Art by David Aja, Michael Lark and Various
Published by Humanoids Publishing

Now this is the way to do an anthology! First Degree: A Crime Anthology, published and co-edited by Mark Waid in its US edition, is a collection of short translated from the French comics stories about crimes. Sounds simple enough. Some of them are about bad guys but some are also of the “life just isn’t fair and that’s a crime” variety. Most of them are violent, some are explicit, but each and every one of them is disturbing. Some of them are downright depressing.

Why should you want to bother to read First Degree then? Why would you want to be disturbed and depressed? Well, because the stories within, without an exception, really, are good comics. They are all well-written with many having unexpected twists in their scant few pages.

They are all well-drawn, as well, in a score of different styles ranging from traditional black and white line art to photo-realistic color art to what looks to me like computer-generated painted artwork.

Apparently, all of this has something to do with the Solar Festival in Cognac, as there are a couple of text features about it as well as related extra art at the back of the back and multiple references to it in the creator bios as well. I remain, however, uncertain as to what the exact tie is.

David Aja, the Spanish artist who has done fan-favorite work for Marvel and DC is the only creator involved whose work was familiar to me but his only work here seems to have been the minimalist cover.

According to their biographies herein, other creators come not only from France but from Cambodia, Africa, Spain, and even a few from the United States.

To say too much about the stories themselves would ruin them as all of them are brief and so many depend on a lack of expectations going in. Odds being what they are, I kept expecting to hit a clunker but I never did. Every story here—many adult in theme and several NSFW—understands how to give the reader the feels, and every story here understands what makes good comics good comics.

Just remember that you may feel like you need a shower and some puppies after you finish First Degree-A Crime Anthology.

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