Cheap Torso (Book) (Brian Michael Bendis, Marc Andreyko) Price

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Customer Reviews of Torso

i wish they would have followed through
despite being very well paced, stylishly presented and interestingly plotted, "torso" suffers from a disapointing conclusion. the book should have been about 1/3 longer to fully develope the characters and themes presented, especially simon's revelation near the end. ness's relationship with his wife didnt come into play as much, nor was it as important as it was meant to be. i really wanted all the the personal attributes of the charaters to be more definately linked to the story and to be more fully developed. i would have been fine with it being simply a "cops and robbers" story, since up to a point, it works fantastically in that regard. but the climax is over before i had time really get excited, souring the story's thriller aspect. i really liked the drawing style combined with the old photos. they both helped to give the story a surreal feel, which complimented the over-the-top nature of the plot itself. but at the end it almost felt as though the authors got sick of writing it making for a very disapointing outcome. **1/2

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Surprisingly deep and detailed.
Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko, Torso (Image Entertainment, 1997)

Sometimes it seems like every city wants to claim a serial killer. Look at the number of municipalities who seem almost proud that Jeffrey Dahmer spent a portion of his upbringing in them; Akron, Ohio, just down the road from me, is one of them. A little closer to home and a little farther away in time, though, Cleveland was the home (and may still be...) of one of the most notorious serial killers active in the first half of the twentieth century: the Torso killer.

Bendis and Andreyko brought the Torso Killer, and Elliott Ness' hunt for him, to stark, ugly life in the series of comic books that has since been collected in this graphic novel. All those faults I found in Doran's A Distant Soil are absent here; Bendis and Andreyko know exactly what they're doing with keeping the reader up to speed with what's going on with each character, know exactly how much they can fit into any given page without overwhelming the reader's sensibilities, and did meticulous research on the case (living in Cleveland, it's kind of hard to get away from the details; the Torso Killer is one of our local public television station's favorite subjects). Only a piece of the ending has been shifted from the way the actual case went, presumably for dramatic effect.

But the book does not just stop at the Torso Killer, delving into the private lives of some of the folks who worked on the case, as well. The result is a cast of well-drawn characters, a good (and faithful, for the most part, to the truth) story, intriguing artwork, a fine script, and a bang-up mystery. How can you possibly go wrong? *** ½

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Crime does not pay
"Torso" is a great comic. Not being a huge fan of crime-fiction myself, I gave it a try based on Bendis's excellent work on the comic series "Powers." Also, I liked the idea of a real-life "super-hero" in Eliot Ness pitched against a real-life "super-villain" in the form of the Torso serial killer.

Like Alan Moore's "From Hell," Bendis took a real, unresolved case and weaved a drama around facts. His story-telling is realistic and gritty, and does not contain Moore's flights of fancy. I would have liked to have seen an appendix, separating the drama from the known facts, and why Bendis choose his particular culprit.

The art is not a strong initial attractor, but after reading a few pages it starts to flow. The mix of photos and drawings is effective.

This is really strong stuff, and I recommend it to comic fans and crime-fiction fans alike.