Crime Comic Review Neil Gaiman THE Court
London Noir, a man seeking a special partner and a mysterious cult of sword bearing witches. Creepy stuff.
CRIME COMIC REVIEW NEIL GAIMAN THE COURT 1996 The Mammoth Book Of Best Crime Comics.
Spoiler Warnings
Gaiman is best known for The Sandman series, and here he turns his hand to crime drama, but with a quirky, sinister hint of the supernatural.
Drawn by Warren Pleece, its evocation off London’s Earl’s Court region is very three dimensional and evocative in the mind. The narrator is a fixer and a bodyguard to an extremely rich business tycoon, who is trafficking in young men for his own sexual pleasures. He has a particular man in mind, a rare male beauty in a cult of creepy, sinister old crones, who are a mix of East European and Middle East stock.
The fixer has more illegal preferences of his own, and he uses an American professor as a means to help procure the young man from the strange gypsy women (who wield swords). The Professor is destined to disappear to maintain silence, and the young man is not destined to survive long either, but the mysterious cult of old witch-like women vanish without trace, leaving the rich gangster unable to secure a replacement for the perfect man of his dreams
Unsettling and evocative for its realistic settings, and managing to make Central London very Noirish.
Arthur Chappell
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